The goal of this project is to develop an interactive neck for ejection system testing manikin made up of complementary sets of flexible inflatable bladder actuators (artificial muscles) working on a column of joints with resilient interspaced discs held within their normal degrees of movement by… More

Research work on intelligent mobile machines is hindered by the lack of mobile robot bases suitable for research and education. trc will work with darpa and darpa researchers to develop requirements, analyze and select the drive system, and design the control and communications subsystems. drive… More

Spacecraft terminal rendezvous, station-keeping, docking, and robotics in space require precision maneuvering over distances ranging from hundreds of meters to zero. fast and accurate positional feedback is difficult to achieve over such extreme ranges within weight and power constraintsof current… More

Unmanned vehicles are desirable in hostile environments. guidance is a difficult problem, particularly in rough terrain. vision is essential. autonomous guidance is not presently viable. remote video guidance by an operator is a practical solution. video data rates imply very high carrier… More

The serpentine robotic arm job description prompts proposing an alternative execution that might be preferable in spacecraft assembly, test and maintenance. rather than have a serpentine arm, this proposal suggests a built-up structure to transport the robotic arm to its work site. presume that the… More

Prototype hardware will be designed for executing the log-hough transform on imagery at video frame rates. this recently developed transform is three orders of magnitude more efficient than the traditional cartesian hough transform, and is a powerful technique for identifying robustly extended… More

Log-polar coordinates have recently been shown to possess significant computational advantages over traditional cartesian coordinates in expressing transformations associated with dynamic 3-d perspective imagery. reduced pixel count and reduction in calculations per pixel suggest the feasibility of… More

This project is addressing the design of a new binocular, stereo, robotic vision system that is three orders of magnitude more efficient and compact than current conventional systems. the new approach is based on log-polar coordinate, image-plane sensor arrays rather than conventional,… More

Telerobotics can be used in nuclear powerplants for inspection, monitoring, and maintenance in order to improve worker safety, to reduce shutdown time, and to reduce operation costs. improved vehicle maneuverability over current designs will be required to allow access to many potential work sites;… More

Efficient sensory perception and processing are crucial to mobile robot navigation. as sensor technology advances, conventional processing methods bottleneck, crippling real time operation. researchers have recently developed a low-cost lidar system capable of generating 10,000 samples per second,… More