TRACLabs is now starting a new Army Phase I STTR along with Robin Murphy from Texas A&M to investigate robotic extraction of wounded soldiers from the battlefield.  Our research project focuses less on the mechanical issues, and more on the issues of human-robot interaction (user interaction with the medic that is a safe zone and victim interaction with the robot).  This project involves advancing the state of the art in interface, robotic architectures, and perception.  Furthermore, the technologies should be generalizable to different domains, like bomb dispersion, automating warehouses, search and rescue, and extraterrestrial construction.

This video shows a quick proof of concept demo (made by our outstanding summer interns) illustrating that control algorithms and architectures that developed in simulation (post forthcoming) can be quickly transferred to a real robot.  Here the robot drives to a person (known location), picks them up using coordinated control of two 7-DOF arms with fixed end paddles, and carries the person back to a known starting location.