SwRI wins two R&D 100 awards

SAN ANTONIO — August 24, 2026 — Two Southwest Research Institute-developed technologies have been selected as winners of prestigious R&D 100 Awards. R&D World recognized SwRI’s patented Parallelogram Synchronized Truss Assembly (PaSTA) technology and the Advanced Locomotive Technology and Rail Infrastructure Optimization System (ALTRIOS), developed in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) National Laboratory of the Rockies (NLR), as two of the most important innovations of 2026.

“All of us at Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) are excited and appreciative of being selected for two R&D 100 Awards this year,” said SwRI President and CEO Adam Hamilton, P.E. “This year’s awards are the result of outstanding technical innovation and applied research skills of our multidisciplinary staff. This year’s awards are outstanding examples of the breadth and depth of SwRI.”

PaSTA was developed in response to the need for a solar-powered spacecraft to have precision control and docking capabilities. SwRI has been contracted by Astroscale U.S. to build, integrate and test a refueling spacecraft, the Astroscale U.S. Provisioner, for the U.S. Space Force. The spacecraft requires precision pointing to dock with other vehicles in space, which necessitates a stiff deployable solar array to power its movements. Any vibrations can disrupt the docking process, making the structure’s stiffness crucial. PaSTA stabilizes the solar arrays, providing the rigid structure needed for effective spacecraft docking maneuvers.

PaSTA uses a patented framework of interconnected elements in a truss structure to increase solar array stability and rigidity. The truss elements are designed to fold flat against the spacecraft during launch and then deploy into the stiffened truss assembly when released by the spacecraft after launch. The technology was patented in 2025. SwRI Institute Engineer Randy Rose and Ryan Rickerson, manager of SwRI’s Electromechanical Systems Section, led the development of PaSTA.

“PaSTA started as an idea on a whiteboard for an ultra-stiff solar array, and SwRI gave us the room to turn it into flight hardware. Now it lets spacecraft maneuver in ways they could not before,” Rickerson said. “SwRI has an amazing team of engineers who made this possible, and this award belongs to them. SwRI's environment is what lets an idea like PaSTA, an ultra-stiff deployable mechanism, become real hardware that helps spacecraft maneuver better than ever.”

ALTRIOS is the first fully integrated open-source tool that can simulate the real-world impacts and expenses related to adopting new locomotive propulsion technologies and expanding associated infrastructure. It combines locomotive and energy storage technology modeling with a robust suite of train dispatch and corridor simulations alongside a high-level train scheduling and routing tool. It uses a physics-based simulation of individual trains and real-world rail infrastructure to evaluate the effectiveness of different energy technologies — including hydrogen, biofuels and batteries, among many others — across the U.S. over the course of decades.

“The Intelligent Systems Division was proud to contribute its software expertise to ALTRIOS, helping advance the efficiency and sustainability of the U.S. rail system,” said Hakima Ibaroudene, who manages SwRI’s Bioinformatics Section.

SwRI developed ALTRIOS in collaboration with NLR, BNSF Railway, The University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The SwRI Locomotive Technology Center supported the ALTRIOS project by providing an extensive collection of locomotive power, efficiency and fuel consumption data, helping with simulation and modeling work, and sharing locomotive battery testing expertise. ALTRIOS was funded by DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency — Energy (ARPA-E) as part of the LOCOMOTIVES (Lowering CO ₂ : Models to Optimize Train Infrastructure, Vehicles and Energy Storage) program.

“The ALTRIOS project is one that exemplifies SwRI’s mission of advancing science and applying technology for the benefit of humankind,” said SwRI Lead Engineer Joel Allardyce, a contributor to ALTRIOS. “It’s an honor to be a part of the ALTRIOS team, and to be a part of a project that provides an open-source tool to the public so that anyone can be involved in the search for solutions to the power challenges of our modern transportation grid.”

The R&D 100 Awards are among the most prestigious innovation awards programs, honoring the top 100 revolutionary technologies each year since 1963. Recipients hail from research institutions, academic and government laboratories, Fortune 500 companies and smaller organizations. Since 1971, SwRI has won 56 R&D 100 Awards.

For more information, visit https://www.swri.org/markets/earth-space/space-research-technology/space-engineering or https://www.swri.org/what-we-do/technical-divisions/powertrain-engineering