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Flexible PICAs combine both carbon and phenolic fiber constituents during a felting process rather than introducing a phenolic through infusion processes that also uses harsh chemicals. MERINO PICA-Flex materials drastically reduces integration complexities when compared to traditional phenolic infused rigid tiles, and can eliminate the costly and time intensive phenolic infusion process, resulting in a thermal protection system (TPS) material more akin to a “blanket” than a rigid TPS. PICA-Flex encompasses a range of configurations, including a dual layer PICA-Flex material with a higher density outer layer(s) to minimize recession, a lower density PICA-Flex material with applicability to aftbody TPS, and a single piece PICA-Flex forebody. PICA-Flex is fabricated by combining by intermingling both carbon and phenolic fiber constituents during a needle punch felting process during which the fibers are made into battings, and the battings are needled together layer-by-layer to build up thickness.

To enable the goal of autonomous assembly of high performing structures, a robot system must be able to travel across a lattice structure in all dimensions, transport and align a unit cell module to the correct location and fasten the module to the existing structure. In this system, a team of multiple mobile bipedal robots work together to carry, transfer, and place 3D-lattice modules (e.g., cuboctahedron voxels) to form a 3D lattice structure. The team of mobile bipedal robots autonomously provide transportation, placement, unpacking, and assembly of voxel modules into functional structures and systems. As the team of mobile bipedal robots live and locomote on the 3D-lattice structure, they monitor health and performance, enabling repair and reconfiguration when needed. The mobile bipedal robots work together in different roles, for example, one as a cargo transport robot and the other as a crane robot. The cargo transport robot and the crane robot work together to move the voxels from one location to another. Each robot includes at least one electronic control module that receives commands from another robot or a central control system. A central control system implements a plan to control the motion sequences of the robots to maximize efficiency and to optimize the work required to completely assemble a structure. The plan is pre-computed or computed during implementation by the central control system or the robots themselves, according to algorithms that utilize the regularity of the lattice structure to simplify path planning, align robotic motions with minimal feedback, and minimize the number of the degrees of freedom required for the robots to locomote across and throughout the 3D-lattice structure and perform structural assembly.