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A JAUS-Compliant Self-Contained Autonomous Control Unit for UGVs

Award Information
Agency: Department of Defense
Branch: Army
Contract: W56HZV-06-C-0578
Agency Tracking Number: A052-219-2888
Amount: $730,000.00
Phase: Phase II
Program: SBIR
Solicitation Topic Code: A05-219
Solicitation Number: 2005.2
Timeline
Solicitation Year: 2005
Award Year: 2006
Award Start Date (Proposal Award Date): 2006-08-08
Award End Date (Contract End Date): 2008-08-08
Small Business Information
33150 Schoolcraft Road
Livonia, MI 48150
United States
DUNS: 176513604
HUBZone Owned: No
Woman Owned: No
Socially and Economically Disadvantaged: No
Principal Investigator
 Douglas MacKenzie
 President
 (734) 367-0430
 doug@mobile-intelligence.com
Business Contact
 Karen MacKenzie
Title: Vice President
Phone: (734) 367-0430
Email: karen@mobile-intelligence.com
Research Institution
N/A
Abstract

We propose building an open architecture, JAUS-compliant, bolt-on controller for unmanned ground robots that provides autonomous operations in collaboration with the human operator. This will be delivered in two ways: First, as a “black box” that can be mounted on any JAUS-compliant platform and take control to provide autonomous capabilities. Second, as a suite of C++ packages with documented APIs that can be used in other DoD systems to incorporate capabilities from this project, all or in part. The Autonomous Control Unit’s capabilities will include: “Follow Me” where the robot follows the operator, “Follow That” follows a soldier or vehicle, “Go There” drives to a location marked on an image viewed from the robot’s navigation camera, and “Follow Path” follows a path sketched on a navigation camera image. The system will also recognize a set of standard military hand signals to visually engage and control the “Follow Me” behavior. The user interface is built on the open-source GTK+ graphics library, under Linux and Windows. It communicates with the ACU over standard TCP/IP, using an open, documented, communications protocol. This will allow easily porting the OCU to other systems, or replacing it with an existing user interface.

* Information listed above is at the time of submission. *

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