TRACLabs, Inc. Robotics and Automation

Texas A&M researchers visit TRACLabs

David Kortenkamp — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 16:32:20 +0000

Dr. Robin Murphy, Raytheon Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at Texas A&M University, and her student Zach Henkel recently visited TRACLabs. Dr. Murphy is collaborating with TRACLabs on a robotic system for the Army that will evacuate wounded soldiers from the battlefield. Dr. Murphy is a leading expert in the use of robots for search and rescue operations and directs the Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue. Dr. Murphy and her student are shown in the picture below with the TRACLabs dual-arm manipulation robot with a Texas A&M survivor interface.

Texas A&M professor Robin Murphy and her student Zach Henkel

SIFT researchers visit TRACLabs

David Kortenkamp — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 19:04:06 +0000

Several researchers from Smart Information Flow Technologies (SIFT) visited TRACLabs recently. TRACLabs and SIFT are teamed on several projects supporting both the Air Force and NASA. SIFT brings expertise in automatic synthesis of control rules from high-level plans. This is combined with TRACLabs experience in automated planning and execution of plans. The Air Force is using this combined technology to provide on-board automation of satellites. NASA is interested in verifying and automating standard operating procedures. The picture below was taken in front of the Saturn V rocket at NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston Texas.

Left to right: David Kortenkamp (TRACLabs), David Musliner (SIFT), Michael Pelican (SIFT), Scott Bell (TRACLabs), Mary Beth Hudson (TRACLabs), Josh Hammell (SIFT)

Students from Law Elementary visit TRACLabs

David Kortenkamp — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 17:58:39 +0000

Students from the James H. Law Elementary School in Houston recently visited TRACLabs to see robotics demonstrations and interact with TRACLabs scientists. Law Elementary is a magnet school for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. Nearly 20 students participated. In the picture below, TRACLabs’ scientist Dr. Patrick Beeson demonstrates a thermal sensor to the students. The TRACLabs manipulator is in the foreground.

Students from James H. Law Elementary visit TRACLabs

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

Seth Gee joins TRACLabs

jeremy — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 17:07:44 +0000

Seth Gee, a recent graduate of University of Texas at Austin has joined the TRACLabs team. While at UT, he worked on embedded systems and control for autonomous aerial and ground vehicles before getting his degree in Computer Engineering.

He will be working on teleoperation software for NASA and GM’s R2. He is also working on dexterous manipulation for TRACBot.

TRACLabs scientists participate in NASA’s Desert RATS

David Kortenkamp — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 14:58:54 +0000

NASA is conducting their annual Desert Research and Technology Studies (RATS) program. Desert RATS evaluates technology, human-robotic systems and extravehicular equipment in the high desert near Flagstaff, Ariz. TRACLabs scientists are working side-by-side with NASA researchers to explore time-delayed operation of robotic assets. You can follow the Desert RATS experiments over the next two weeks at the following sites:

Desert RATS website
Twitter
Facebook

The Habitat Demonstration Unit (HDU) and Space Exploration Vehicle (SEV) from Desert RATS

Follow Robonaut on Twitter

David Kortenkamp — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 19:37:23 +0000

NASA’s Robonaut is undergoing testing on-board the International Space Station. During testing, Robonaut is tweeting:

http://twitter.com/#!/AstroRobonaut

TRACLabs researchers have worked with NASA on various generations of Robonaut over the past decade and continue to perform joint research with NASA on a variety of robotic technologies.

NASA's Robonaut on-board the ISS

Soldier Extraction

Patrick Beeson — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 14:30:54 +0000

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.

Modular 7-DOF arm

Patrick Beeson — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 14:16:40 +0000

This video shows off a modular arm, that is designed to operate from 1 to 7 degrees of freedom. This video shows the 7 joints (4 rolls and 3 pitch joints) going from sitting on a table to a fully powered and operational arm in under 2 minutes. This uses our Universal Mating Adapter technology, so that all power and communications are handled inside each joint. The UMA allows hotswappable joints. Each joint also stores it’s configuration and calibration data. At around time 1:54, you can hear the brakes of the arm disengage. The brakes default to on with no power and their last known state is reinitialized when the brakes are released.

This video also shows joint control as well as coordinated Cartesian control as the arm descends to attach to an end effector (a drill bit). The wrist roll joint is equipped with an automated attach/detach mechanism so that different end effectors and manipulators can be used in complex scenarios.

This arm was produced under a NASA Phase II SBIR.