Engineering Papers⌕ Search

SEARCH · Engineering Papers

Results for “Robot”

Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 199 records · Page 11
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1995

Emergency response mobile robot for operations in combustible atmospheres

A mobile, self-powered, self-contained, and remote-controlled robot is presented. The robot is capable of safely operating in a combustible atmosphere and providing information about the atmosphere to the operator. The robot includes non-sparking and non-arcing electro-mechanical and electronic components designed to prevent the robot from igniting the combustible atmosphere. The robot also includes positively pressurized enclosures that house the electromechanical and electronic components of the robot and prevent intrusion of the combustible atmosphere into the enclosures. The enclosures are interconnected such that a pressurized gas injected into any one of the enclosures is routed to all the other enclosures through the interconnections. It is preferred that one or more sealed internal channels through structures intervening between the enclosures be employed. Pressure transducers for detecting if the pressure within the enclosures falls below a predetermined level are included. The robot also has a sensing device for determining the types of combustible substances in the surrounding atmosphere, as well as the concentrations of each type of substance relative to a pre-determined lower explosive limit (LEL). In addition, the sensing device can determine the percent level of oxygen present in the surrounding atmosphere.

Stone, Henry W.↗
NASA NTRS1997

What can Robots Do? Towards Theoretical Analysis

Robots have become more and more sophisticated. Every robot has its limits. If we face a task that existing robots cannot solve, then, before we start improving these robots, it is important to check whether it is, in principle, possible to design a robot for this task or not. For that, it is necessary to describe what exactly the robots can, in principle, do. A similar problem - to describe what exactly computers can do - has been solved as early as 1936, by Turing. In this paper, we describe a framework within which we can, hopefully, formalize and answer the question of what exactly robots can do.

Nogueira, Monica↗
NASA NTRS2004

Autonomous Evolution of Dynamic Gaits with Two Quadruped Robots

A challenging task that must be accomplished for every legged robot is creating the walking and running behaviors needed for it to move. In this paper we describe our system for autonomously evolving dynamic gaits on two of Sony's quadruped robots. Our evolutionary algorithm runs on board the robot and uses the robot's sensors to compute the quality of a gait without assistance from the experimenter. First we show the evolution of a pace and trot gait on the OPEN-R prototype robot. With the fastest gait, the robot moves at over 10/min/min., which is more than forty body-lengths/min. While these first gaits are somewhat sensitive to the robot and environment in which they are evolved, we then show the evolution of robust dynamic gaits, one of which is used on the ERS-110, the first consumer version of AIBO.

Hornby, Gregory S.↗
NASA NTRS2006

Are You Talking to Me? Dialogue Systems Supporting Mixed Teams of Humans and Robots

This position paper describes an approach to building spoken dialogue systems for environments containing multiple human speakers and hearers, and multiple robotic speakers and hearers. We address the issue, for robotic hearers, of whether the speech they hear is intended for them, or more likely to be intended for some other hearer. We will describe data collected during a series of experiments involving teams of multiple human and robots (and other software participants), and some preliminary results for distinguishing robot-directed speech from human-directed speech. The domain of these experiments is Mars-analogue planetary exploration. These Mars-analogue field studies involve two subjects in simulated planetary space suits doing geological exploration with the help of 1-2 robots, supporting software agents, a habitat communicator and links to a remote science team. The two subjects are performing a task (geological exploration) which requires them to speak with each other while also speaking with their assistants. The technique used here is to use a probabilistic context-free grammar language model in the speech recognizer that is trained on prior robot-directed speech. Intuitively, the recognizer will give higher confidence to an utterance if it is similar to utterances that have been directed to the robot in the past.

Dowding, John↗
NASA NTRS2008

Control Architecture for Robotic Agent Command and Sensing

Control Architecture for Robotic Agent Command and Sensing (CARACaS) is a recent product of a continuing effort to develop architectures for controlling either a single autonomous robotic vehicle or multiple cooperating but otherwise autonomous robotic vehicles. CARACaS is potentially applicable to diverse robotic systems that could include aircraft, spacecraft, ground vehicles, surface water vessels, and/or underwater vessels. CARACaS incudes an integral combination of three coupled agents: a dynamic planning engine, a behavior engine, and a perception engine. The perception and dynamic planning en - gines are also coupled with a memory in the form of a world model. CARACaS is intended to satisfy the need for two major capabilities essential for proper functioning of an autonomous robotic system: a capability for deterministic reaction to unanticipated occurrences and a capability for re-planning in the face of changing goals, conditions, or resources. The behavior engine incorporates the multi-agent control architecture, called CAMPOUT, described in An Architecture for Controlling Multiple Robots (NPO-30345), NASA Tech Briefs, Vol. 28, No. 11 (November 2004), page 65. CAMPOUT is used to develop behavior-composition and -coordination mechanisms. Real-time process algebra operators are used to compose a behavior network for any given mission scenario. These operators afford a capability for producing a formally correct kernel of behaviors that guarantee predictable performance. By use of a method based on multi-objective decision theory (MODT), recommendations from multiple behaviors are combined to form a set of control actions that represents their consensus. In this approach, all behaviors contribute simultaneously to the control of the robotic system in a cooperative rather than a competitive manner. This approach guarantees a solution that is good enough with respect to resolution of complex, possibly conflicting goals within the constraints of the mission to be accomplished by the vehicle(s).

Huntsberger, Terrance↗
NASA NTRS2009

Robotics Algorithms Provide Nutritional Guidelines

On July 5, 1997, a small robot emerged from its lander like an insect from an egg, crawling out onto the rocky surface of Mars. About the size of a child s wagon, NASA s Sojourner robot was the first successful rover mission to the Red Planet. For 83 sols (Martian days, typically about 40 minutes longer than Earth days), Sojourner - largely remote controlled by NASA operators on Earth - transmitted photos and data unlike any previously collected. Sojourner was perhaps the crowning achievement of the NASA Space Telerobotics Program, an Agency initiative designed to push the limits of robotics in space. Telerobotics - devices that merge the autonomy of robotics with the direct human control of teleoperators - was already a part of NASA s efforts; probes like the Viking landers that preceded Sojourner on Mars, for example, were telerobotic applications. The Space Telerobotics Program, a collaboration between Ames Research Center, Johnson Space Center, Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and multiple universities, focused on developing remote-controlled robotics for three main purposes: on-orbit assembly and servicing, science payload tending, and planetary surface robotics. The overarching goal was to create robots that could be guided to build structures in space, monitor scientific experiments, and, like Sojourner, scout distant planets in advance of human explorers. While telerobotics remains a significant aspect of NASA s efforts, as evidenced by the currently operating Spirit and Opportunity Mars rovers, the Hubble Space Telescope, and many others - the Space Telerobotics Program was dissolved and redistributed within the Agency the same year as Sojourner s success. The program produced a host of remarkable technologies and surprising inspirations, including one that is changing the way people eat

Source record↗
NASA NTRS2010

Robotic Lunar Landers for Science and Exploration

NASA Marshall Space Flight Center and The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory has been conducting mission studies and performing risk reduction activities for NASA s robotic lunar lander flight projects. In 2005, the Robotic Lunar Exploration Program Mission #2 (RLEP-2) was selected as a Exploration Systems Mission Directorate precursor robotic lunar lander mission to demonstrate precision landing and definitively determine if there was water ice at the lunar poles; however, this project was canceled. Since 2008, the team has been supporting NASA s Science Mission Directorate designing small lunar robotic landers for diverse science missions. The primary emphasis has been to establish anchor nodes of the International Lunar Network (ILN), a network of lunar science stations envisioned to be emplaced by multiple nations. This network would consist of multiple landers carrying instruments to address the geophysical characteristics and evolution of the moon. Additional mission studies have been conducted to support other objectives of the lunar science community and extensive risk reduction design and testing has been performed to advance the design of the lander system and reduce development risk for flight projects. This paper describes the current status of the robotic lunar mission studies that have been conducted by the MSFC/APL Robotic Lunar Lander Development team, including the ILN Anchor Nodes mission. In addition, the results to date of the lunar lander development risk reduction efforts including high pressure propulsion system testing, structure and mechanism development and testing, long cycle time battery testing and combined GN&C and avionics testing will be addressed. The most visible elements of the risk reduction program are two autonomous lander test articles: a compressed air system with limited flight durations and a second version using hydrogen peroxide propellant to achieve significantly longer flight times and the ability to more fully exercise flight sensors and algorithms. Robotic Lunar Lander design and development will have significant feed-forward to other missions to the Moon and, indeed, to other airless bodies such as Mercury, asteroids, and Europa, to which similar science and exploration objectives are applicable.

Cohen, B. A.↗
NASA NTRS2003

Experiments with an EVA Assistant Robot

Human missions to the Moon or Mars will likely be accompanied by many useful robots that will assist in all aspects of the mission, from construction to maintenance to surface exploration. Such robots might scout terrain, carry tools, take pictures, curate samples, or provide status information during a traverse. At NASA/JSC, the EVA Robotic Assistant (ERA) project has developed a robot testbed for exploring the issues of astronaut-robot interaction. Together with JSC's Advanced Spacesuit Lab, the ERA team has been developing robot capabilities and testing them with space-suited test subjects at planetary surface analog sites. In this paper, we describe the current state of the ERA testbed and two weeks of remote field tests in Arizona in September 2002. A number of teams with a broad range of interests participated in these experiments to explore different aspects of what must be done to develop a program for robotic assistance to surface EVA. Technologies explored in the field experiments included a fuel cell, new mobility platform and manipulator, novel software and communications infrastructure for multi-agent modeling and planning, a mobile science lab, an "InfoPak" for monitoring the spacesuit, and delayed satellite communication to a remote operations team. In this paper, we will describe this latest round of field tests in detail.

Burridge, Robert R.↗
NASA NTRS2010

Toolkits Control Motion of Complex Robotics

That space is a hazardous environment for humans is common knowledge. Even beyond the obvious lack of air and gravity, the extreme temperatures and exposure to radiation make the human exploration of space a complicated and risky endeavor. The conditions of space and the space suits required to conduct extravehicular activities add layers of difficulty and danger even to tasks that would be simple on Earth (tightening a bolt, for example). For these reasons, the ability to scout distant celestial bodies and perform maintenance and construction in space without direct human involvement offers significant appeal. NASA has repeatedly turned to complex robotics for solutions to extend human presence deep into space at reduced risk and cost and to enhance space operations in low Earth orbit. At Johnson Space Center, engineers explore the potential applications of dexterous robots capable of performing tasks like those of an astronaut during extravehicular activities and even additional ones too delicate or dangerous for human participation. Johnson's Dexterous Robotics Laboratory experiments with a wide spectrum of robot manipulators, such as the Mitsubishi PA-10 and the Robotics Research K-1207i robotic arms. To simplify and enhance the use of these robotic systems, Johnson researchers sought generic control methods that could work effectively across every system.

Source record↗
NASA NTRS2010

Robotics, a Kennedy Educate to Innovate (KETI) PowerPoint Presentation

This presentation is a series of lecture notes for a lecture on Robotics. It describes the concept of robots and differentiates between robotic devices and "true robots". It also reviews the reasons for why we use robots, generally, and specificaly.why NASA uses robots. It also explains what an end effector is and explores some of the careers available in the field of robotics.

Davila, Dina↗
NASA NTRS2010

FootSpring: A Compliance Model for the ATHLETE Family of Robots

This paper describes and evaluates one method of modeling compliance in a wheel-on-leg walking robot. This method assumes that all of the robot s compliance takes place at the ground contact points, specifically the tires and legs, and that the rest of the robot is rigid. Optimization is used to solve for the displacement of the feet and of the center of gravity. This method was tested on both robots of the ATHLETE family, which have different compliance. For both robots, the model predicts the sag of points on the robot chassis with an average error of about one percent of the height of the robot.

Wheeler, Dawn Deborah↗
NASA NTRS2011

High-Performance 3D Articulated Robot Display

In the domain of telerobotic operations, the primary challenge facing the operator is to understand the state of the robotic platform. One key aspect of understanding the state is to visualize the physical location and configuration of the platform. As there is a wide variety of mobile robots, the requirements for visualizing their configurations vary diversely across different platforms. There can also be diversity in the mechanical mobility, such as wheeled, tracked, or legged mobility over surfaces. Adaptable 3D articulated robot visualization software can accommodate a wide variety of robotic platforms and environments. The visualization has been used for surface, aerial, space, and water robotic vehicle visualization during field testing. It has been used to enable operations of wheeled and legged surface vehicles, and can be readily adapted to facilitate other mechanical mobility solutions. The 3D visualization can render an articulated 3D model of a robotic platform for any environment. Given the model, the software receives real-time telemetry from the avionics system onboard the vehicle and animates the robot visualization to reflect the telemetered physical state. This is used to track the position and attitude in real time to monitor the progress of the vehicle as it traverses its environment. It is also used to monitor the state of any or all articulated elements of the vehicle, such as arms, legs, or control surfaces. The visualization can also render other sorts of telemetered states visually, such as stress or strains that are measured by the avionics. Such data can be used to color or annotate the virtual vehicle to indicate nominal or off-nominal states during operation. The visualization is also able to render the simulated environment where the vehicle is operating. For surface and aerial vehicles, it can render the terrain under the vehicle as the avionics sends it location information (GPS, odometry, or star tracking), and locate the vehicle over or on the terrain correctly. For long traverses over terrain, the visualization can stream in terrain piecewise in order to maintain the current area of interest for the operator without incurring unreasonable resource constraints on the computing platform. The visualization software is designed to run on laptops that can operate in field-testing environments without Internet access, which is a frequently encountered situation when testing in remote locations that simulate planetary environments such as Mars and other planetary bodies.

Powell, Mark W.↗
NASA NTRS2015

The Affordance Template ROS Package for Robot Task Programming

This paper introduces the Affordance Template ROS package for quickly programming, adjusting, and executing robot applications in the ROS RViz environment. This package extends the capabilities of RViz interactive markers by allowing an operator to specify multiple end-effector waypoint locations and grasp poses in object-centric coordinate frames and to adjust these waypoints in order to meet the run-time demands of the task (specifically, object scale and location). The Affordance Template package stores task specifications in a robot-agnostic XML description format such that it is trivial to apply a template to a new robot. As such, the Affordance Template package provides a robot-generic ROS tool appropriate for building semi-autonomous, manipulation-based applications. Affordance Templates were developed by the NASA-JSC DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) team and have since successfully been deployed on multiple platforms including the NASA Valkyrie and Robonaut 2 humanoids, the University of Texas Dreamer robot and the Willow Garage PR2. In this paper, the specification and implementation of the affordance template package is introduced and demonstrated through examples for wheel (valve) turning, pick-and-place, and drill grasping, evincing its utility and flexibility for a wide variety of robot applications.

Hart, Stephen↗
NASA NTRS2015

The ISECG* Global Exploration Roadmap as Context for Robotic and Human Exploration Operations

The International Space Exploration Coordination Group (ISECG) Global Exploration Roadmap (GER) provides a broad international context for understanding how robotic missions and robotic assets can enable future human exploration of multiple destinations. This presentation will provide a brief high-level review of the GER with a focus on key robotic missions and robotic assets that can provide enabling technology advancements and that also raise interesting operational challenges in both the near-term and long-term. The GER presently features a variety of robotic missions and robotic assets that can provide important technology advancements as well as operational challenges and improvements, in areas ranging from: (a) leveraging the International Space Station, (b) planetary science robotic missions to potential human destinations, (c) micro-g body proximity operations (e.g. asteroids), (d) autonomous operations, (e) high and low-latency telerobotics, (f) human assisted sample return, and (g) contamination control. This presentation will highlight operational and technology challenges in these areas that have feed forward implications for human exploration.

telerobotics↗
NASA NTRS2015

Supervised Remote Robot with Guided Autonomy and Teleoperation (SURROGATE): A Framework for Whole-Body Manipulation

The use of the cognitive capabilties of humans to help guide the autonomy of robotics platforms in what is typically called "supervised-autonomy" is becoming more commonplace in robotics research. The work discussed in this paper presents an approach to a human-in-the-loop mode of robot operation that integrates high level human cognition and commanding with the intelligence and processing power of autonomous systems. Our framework for a "Supervised Remote Robot with Guided Autonomy and Teleoperation" (SURROGATE) is demonstrated on a robotic platform consisting of a pan-tilt perception head, two 7-DOF arms connected by a single 7-DOF torso, mounted on a tracked-wheel base. We present an architecture that allows high-level supervisory commands and intents to be specified by a user that are then interpreted by the robotic system to perform whole body manipulation tasks autonomously. We use a concept of "behaviors" to chain together sequences of "actions" for the robot to perform which is then executed real time.

Hebert, Paul↗
NASA NTRS2017

Controlling Tensegrity Robots through Evolution using Friction based Actuation

Traditional robotic structures have limitations in planetary exploration as their rigid structural joints are prone to damage in new and rough terrains. In contrast, robots based on tensegrity structures, composed of rods and tensile cables, offer a highly robust, lightweight, and energy efficient solution over traditional robots. In addition tensegrity robots can be highly configurable by rearranging their topology of rods, cables and motors. However, these highly configurable tensegrity robots pose a significant challenge for locomotion due to their complexity. This study investigates a control pattern for successful locomotion in tensegrity robots through an evolutionary algorithm. A twelve-rod hardware model is rapidly prototyped to utilize a new actuation method based on friction. A web-based physics simulation is created to model the twelve-rod tensegrity ball structure. Square-waves are used as control policies for the actuators of the tensegrity structure. Monte Carlo trials are run to find the most successful number of amplitudes for the square-wave control policy. From the results, an evolutionary algorithm is implemented to find the most optimized solution for locomotion of the twelve-rod tensegrity structure. The software pattern coupled with the new friction based actuation method can serve as the basis for highly efficient tensegrity robots in space exploration.

Tensegrit↗
NASA NTRS2018

Investigating Astromaterials Curation Applications for Dexterous Robotic Arms

The Astromaterials Acquisition and Curation office at NASA Johnson Space Center is currently investigating tools and methods that will enable the curation of future astromaterials collections. Size and temperature constraints for astromaterials to be collected by current and future proposed missions will require the development of new robotic sample and tool handling capabilities. NASA Curation has investigated the application of robot arms in the past, and robotic 3-axis micromanipulators are currently in use for small particle curation in the Stardust and Cosmic Dust laboratories. While 3-axis micromanipulators have been extremely successful for activities involving the transfer of isolated particles in the 5-20 micron range (e.g. from microscope slide to epoxy bullet tip, beryllium SEM disk), their limited ranges of motion and lack of yaw, pitch, and roll degrees of freedom restrict their utility in other applications. For instance, curators removing particles from cosmic dust collectors by hand often employ scooping and rotating motions to successfully free trapped particles from the silicone oil coatings. Similar scooping and rotating motions are also employed when isolating a specific particle of interest from an aliquot of crushed meteorite. While cosmic dust curators have been remarkably successful with these kinds of particle manipulations using handheld tools, operator fatigue limits the number of particles that can be removed during a given extraction session. The challenges for curation of small particles will be exacerbated by mission requirements that samples be processed in N2 sample cabinets (i.e. gloveboxes). We have been investigating the use of compact robot arms to facilitate sample handling within gloveboxes. Six-axis robot arms potentially have applications beyond small particle manipulation. For instance, future sample return missions may involve biologically sensitive astromaterials that can be easily compromised by physical interaction with a curator; other potential future returned samples may require cryogenic curation. Robot arms may be combined with high resolution cameras within a sample cabinet and controlled remotely by curator. Sophisticated robot arm and hand combination systems can be programmed to mimic the movements of a curator wearing a data glove; successful implementation of such a system may ultimately allow a curator to virtually operate in a nitrogen, cryogenic, or biologically sensitive environment with dexterity comparable to that of a curator physically handling samples in a glove box.

Snead, C. J.↗
NASA NTRS2020

Modeling and Control of Robot-Structure Coupling During In-Space Structure Assembly

This paper considers the problem of robot-structure coupling dynamics during in-space robotic assembly of large flexible structures. A two-legged walking robot is used as a construction agent, whose primary goal is to stably walking on the flexible structure while carrying a substructure component to a designated location. The reaction forces inserted by the structure to the walking robot are treated as bounded disturbance inputs, and a trajectory tracking robotic controller is proposed that combines the standard full state feedback motion controller and an adaptive controller to account for the disturbance inputs. In this study, a reduced-order Euler-Bernoulli beam structure model is adapted, and a finite number of co-located sensors and actuators are distributed along the span of the beam structure. The robot-structure coupling forces are treated as a bounded external forcing function to the structure, and hence an output covariance constraint problem can be formulated, in terms of linear matrix inequality, for optimal structure control by utilizing the direct output feedback controllers. The numerical simulations show the effectiveness of the proposed robot-structure modeling and control methodology.

Swei, Sean↗