TRACLabs, Inc. Robotics and Automation » News

NASA awards TRACLabs new research contract

David Kortenkamp — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 17:51:12 +0000

NASA has announced that TRACLabs will be awarded an SBIR Phase II contract worth nearly $750,000 to provide tools to develop automated planning models for operation of the International Space Station (ISS). This work will show that the availability of computer-useable ISS model information can lead to practical applications of NASA’s automated planning efforts

TRACLabs receives new NASA research contracts

David Kortenkamp — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 17:45:18 +0000

NASA has recently announced that TRACLabs will be awarded four new Phase I SBIR contracts and one new Phase I STTR contract, collectively worth over $600,000. The awards are:

Stereo Vision for SPHERES-based Navigation and Monitoring,
A Planning and Control Toolkit for Dual Arm Manipulation,
Adaptive Automation for Anomaly Resolution,
Perception Engine for Activity Recognition and Logging,
Anytime Summarization for Remote Robot Operations

TRACLabs receives Army STTR award

David Kortenkamp — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 11:36:13 +0000

The US Army has announced that TRACLabs and Texas A&M University will be awarded a Phase I Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) award worth $150,000. The award is to develop an autonomous robot that can assist in the medical treatment and evacuation of injured soldiers from the battlefield. TRACLabs will apply its computer vision, intelligent control and human-robot interaction expertise gained from NASA’s Robonaut project. Texas A&M Raytheon Profession of Computer Science and Engineering, Dr. Robin Murphy will apply her experience in search and rescue robotics. The resulting dual-manipulator, mobile robot will be able to apply simple treatments to injured soldiers and also evacuate injured soldiers from the battlefield.

TRACLabs receives Navy STTR award

David Kortenkamp — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 11:26:47 +0000

The Navy has announced that TRACLabs and the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) will be receiving a Phase I Small Business Technology Transfer Research (STTR) award worth $150,000. The award is to to design and demonstrate a combined EO/LIDAR perception system, LEOPARD (for Lidar and Electro-Optic Perception with Advanced Recalibration Design), that facilitates improved autonomy for UGVs. Research and development of the LEOPARD system will focus on integration of the multi-camera/LIDAR hardware and on the software needed for automatic calibration, sensor fusion, and terrain analysis.

TRACLabs receives NASA research contract

David Kortenkamp — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 16:10:04 +0000

NASA has recently announced that TRACLabs will be awarded a Phase II STTR entitled “Integration of Notification with 3D Visualization of Rover Operations.” This work will be performed in cooperation with Carnegie Mellon University – Silicon Valley and Stinger Ghaffarian Technologies (SGT). The contract is to develop software for notifying users of 3D visualizations about important notices without distracting users unnecessarily or adding to the visual clutter. This software will monitor events from the system or user, identify which events should be brought to the user’s attention, and alert users in the 3D pane. The appearance of alerts is altered to shift a user’s attention to new notices based on an assessment of the importance and urgency of the notice specific to the user. Thus the same notice may be presented to different users in different ways. Because notices are anchored to a screen overlay, they are visible regardless of what location the user is viewing in the 3D space.

TRACLabs awarded three NASA contracts

David Kortenkamp — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 21:34:40 +0000

NASA has announced that TRACLabs has been selected to receive two Phase I Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contracts and one Phase I Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) contract worth a total of nearly $300,000. The three contracts extend TRACLabs’ research into robotics and automation to assist NASA in their operations. The three awards are: 1) Assessing Human Task Performance When Performing Electronic Procedures; 2) Ontological Models to Support Planning Operations; and 3) Building and Executing Rover Plans with Contingent Tasks.

TRACLabs awarded Army thermal vision contract

David Kortenkamp — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 19:04:29 +0000

The US Army has awarded TRACLabs a Phase I Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract to develop a thermal sensing system for robots. The system, called PROWL for Perception for Robotic Operation Without Light, will allow robots to navigate their environment without needing any light. The contract is worth $70,000 with a $50,000 option.

TRACLabs awarded NASA robot control contract

David Kortenkamp — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 13:48:14 +0000

NASA has awarded TRACLabs Inc. a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract worth $600,000 over two years. The contract is to design and develop a robot behavioral simulation to assist ground controllers in operating the R2 robot on the International Space Station (ISS).

TRACLabs awarded Army computer vision contract

David Kortenkamp — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 13:40:44 +0000

The US Army has awarded TRACLabs Inc. a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract worth $750,000 over two years. The contract is to design a compact stereo vision system for use on small unmanned ground vehicles. TRACLabs is partnering with Georgia Tech on this grant.

TRACLabs awarded Army human-robot interaction contract

TRACLabs Administrator — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 19:03:41 +0000

The US Army has awarded TRACLabs Inc. a Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) contract worth $70,000 over six months. The contract is for wpnstrating the use of human tracking and gesture recognition to control a mobile robot. TRACLabs Inc. is teaming with researchers from Brown University.