Center Builds Robots With More Bang for the Buck

ROBOTICS
Center Builds Robots With
More Bang for the Buck
Organization
focuses on
building and
testing prototypes
quickly and
including program
sponsors earlier
in the process.
By Rita Boland
s the demand for robotics
expands in both the commercial and public sectors,
developers at a university
institute are working to move
relevant technology into the marketplace rapidly. Engineers are creating
smarter systems that are more
autonomous and that have applications ranging from agriculture to combat. Current programs are spawning
new ideas, and program officials are
seeking to demonstrate technology to
funding authorities quickly to determine the best path forward early in
the development cycle.
The National Robotics Engineering
Center (NREC), a unit of the Carnegie
Mellon University Robotics Institute,
Pittsburgh, is a major robotics engineering and development organization for
both public and private programs.
Sometimes considered a hybrid
between a university center and a contractor, the NREC has many projects
underway and is looking toward future
trends as well.
Compared to the remainder of the
Carnegie Mellon campus, the center is
A
The Crusher unmanned ground combat vehicle (UGCV) performs during a
field test. When raised, the long mast enables surveillance capabilities.
staff heavy, employing 60 to 70 professional engineers and about a half dozen
of both faculty members and graduate
students. The mission of the engineers
is to create functioning products, not to
publish or develop new theory. The
NREC also has on staff several highlevel technicians whose expertise
enables the center to integrate complex
systems right at its facility. Officials at
the NREC strive to create prototypes
early to give program sponsors concrete
ideas about how devices will operate,
and they keep processes transparent,
inviting government and company personnel to view their work.
Steve DiAntonio, director of business
development at the NREC, explains
that currently, few applied robotics
capabilities exist in the marketplace in
either the public or private sectors.
Only in the past 10 years has there been
a need to use laboratory-grade technology to make robotics more robust and
cost effective so that the automation
can be applied in true operational environments. By displaying capabilities in
these types of environments, NREC
personnel give interested parties a better idea of whether a technology should
advance to the next stage and whether it
would be productive. These same decisions are more challenging to make in
the early technology stages. “It’s just
difficult to connect the dots,” DiAntonio says.
The NREC prides itself on quickly
developing concepts and then prototypes and delivering them in a real environment under realistic conditions. For
example, in a coal-mining project, the
NREC develops sensors for certain
machinery. The center ensures sensors
are fireproof and has them certified by
the necessary regulating agencies so the
devices can be tested in the real product
environment.
In terms of U.S. Defense Department
projects, the NREC has a technical
readiness level of 5 to 6, meaning that it
develops systems that have been tested
in operationally relevant environments.
One of the major military projects
being conducted at the center is the
Crusher unmanned ground combat
vehicle (UGCV) for the UGCV PerceptOR Integration (UPI) program. PerceptOR stands for Perception for Off-Road
Robotics. The UPI program combines
Crusher with advanced perception,
autonomy and learning techniques. The
program incorporates system design
The NREC is developing the Gladiator robot to serve as a surveillance vehicle
for troops in combat. New versions currently are being assembled.
across vehicles, sensors and software,
enabling one component’s strengths to
compensate for weaknesses in a different component. The UPI is a U.S. Army
Future Combat Systems feed program.
The Crusher component requires
intensive field experimentation.
Approximately three times a year
researchers take the systems to a challenging outdoor environment at locations such as Fort Carson, Colorado,
and Fort Bliss, Texas. For two straight
weeks of 15-hour days, they perform
autonomous runs with the platform,
including turning various components
on and off to determine the most effective technology that will increase the
system’s performance.
During the field experiments, the
NREC invites personnel from Future
Combat Systems, both military and
contractor, to view the activities.
DiAntonio shares that the NREC tries
to give the Army some visibility into
what Crusher is actually capable of
doing so the service can make a judgment about whether to continue to
invest in the technology. Allowing the
military to decide future funding earlier
in the development process aligns with
acquisition officials’ calls for more prototyping before the Defense Department
advances programs into system development and demonstration. The change
in procedure saves funding and helps
decision makers better determine
whether a technology is robust enough
to transition to a full program. The
NREC has geared itself to excel at this
type of advanced evaluation offering.
On occasion, an NREC program
demonstration leads to another project.
Crusher was developed as a vehicle to
conduct UPI experiments and tests. Personnel at the NREC took the requirements provided by the Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency
(DARPA) for the UPI and started with a
clean slate to invent a configuration that
made sense for the program. They had
to figure out how to take advantage of a
vehicle with no cockpit as well as what
it would look like. UPI personnel now
are examining how to enable the vehicles to travel over terrain that soldiers
traverse, to navigate intelligently and to
conduct missions autonomously.
ROBOTICS
The NREC recently signed a new
contract with the U.S. Army TankAutomotive Research, Development
and Engineering Center (TARDEC) to
build an updated version of the Crusher
as part of the Autonomous Platform
Demonstrator program. TARDEC plans
to add, on a work-directive basis, the
requirement for NREC engineers to
develop an unmanned ground vehicle
end-to-end control architecture and to
demonstrate the viability of the vehicle’s autonomous operations in a relevant environment.
When NREC staff members began
their work with the UPI program,
DiAntonio says they never intended to
demonstrate how it would actually work
using Future Combat Systems mission
planning. With the new program contract, the Army will have the ability to
evaluate all the infrastructure systems
around the autonomous vehicle and
obtain more information about how
these types of robots could be used.
The NREC differentiates between its
projects with unmanned vehicle design
and its autonomous vehicle technologies work. Each category is a separate
project area within the center. DiAntonio explains that the unmanned vehicles
projects focus more on the design
aspect, such as the best form for a ninepound robot. The autonomous vehicle
project area focuses more on the sensors
and software necessary to make the
vehicle intelligent. Platforms for those
projects may be developed at the center,
or personnel may take advantage of
existing platforms. Other NREC project
categories include operator-assist technologies, innovative mechanisms, sensing and image processing applications
and machine learning applications.
Of all the programs under the
NREC’s various categories, DiAntonio
says that the UPI is the flagship. In
February, the UPI team performed a
field test at Fort Carson, experimenting
with a series of metrics it must meet to
receive a checkmark from DARPA.
Over the course of the UPI program, the
NREC has tried to increase the complexity of the terrain the vehicle must
travel, increase the vehicle speed and
reduce the number of human interventions necessary to complete a mission.
The Crusher
UGCV was
developed by
the National
Robotics
Engineering
Center (NREC)
to support
the UGCV
Perception
for Off-Road
Robotics
(PerceptOR)
Interface
program’s
experiments
and tests.
All the testing includes certain commonalities. The Crusher will start
traversing of a certain number of kilometers and will have to hit waypoints—
Global Positioning System (GPS) spots
about one kilometer apart—with the
objective to reach them as quickly as
possible with no human intervention.
The nature of the terrain makes the
mission challenging for the vehicle.
Sensors have difficulty determining
the identification of objects such as
bushes and other vegetation, although
developers already have created the
technology to allow the vehicles to
handle geometrical obstacles such as
roads, large rocks and trees. “That
problem has pretty much been solved,”
DiAntonio states.
In a more remote environment, such
as a meadow, relying on sensors to
make decisions based on geometry can
result in failure. For example, a sensor
might pick up on what it perceives to
be a solid wall when the obstacle is
actually tall grass. To overcome the
problems, engineers must add color
and other sophisticated algorithms so
vehicles can determine when an object
is, for example, grass that it can roll
through. “UPI is without a doubt the
most sophisticated robot for that type
of terrain,” DiAntonio says.
Engineers with the program also are
trying to take advantage of overhead
imagery. The robots benefit from
receiving satellite or other high-resolution imagery before they begin their
missions because the engineers
employ techniques to help base a path
on the overhead information. Program
officials have shown that the robots
move faster and more efficiently using
that type of imagery.
Another big effort at the NREC is
DARPA’s Urban Challenge. In contrast
to the UPI program, this project
involves autonomous vehicles navigating through urban areas. “There, the
challenge is dynamic obstacles,”
DiAntonio states. The NREC did not
take the lead on Carnegie Mellon’s
Urban Challenge project but contributed
resources and personnel.
The NREC has noticed several trends
in the robotics industry, both government and commercial. In the military,
DiAntonio says that one of the biggest
trends is the comfort level and familiarity young officers and noncommissioned
officers have with robotics. As they
become tomorrow’s leaders, these officers will begin finding new ways to
apply the technology.
The military’s next big step would be
to move larger and faster robots into the
field. One such project at the NREC is
Gladiator. “That is what I would call a
tactical robot, one that would actually
go in front of infantry, Marine infantry
in this case,” DiAntonio explains. The
goal underpinning the various robot
development programs—from current
technology used to handle improvised
explosive devices to the future devices
that precede human forces—is to keep
troops out of harm’s way.
In the commercial world, DiAntonio sees trends in the mining and
farming industries toward using more
ROBOTICS
robotics. Mining companies can use
robots to find materials in locations
too dangerous or impossible for
humans to access, and farmers already
are putting GPS infrastructure in
place. The challenge on the commercial side is more a funding issue than
a development issue because of the
cost of many of the systems. In the
near term, however, DiAntonio
expects robotics to grow more in the
private than public sector, as the technology becomes more affordable.
In addition to the current work at the
center, officials at the NREC are looking
at future trends. DiAntonio identifies one
trend as learning techniques for robots.
Engineers are developing techniques to
study whether a robot can learn from its
mistakes. “That is the technique I think
that will dominate over the next 10
years,” he shares.
As engineers build the software, they
need to solve the perception problem
robots encounter. Humans have eyes as
sensors and the ability to interpret what
they see. “The difficulty in replicating
that in hardware and computing is quite
challenging,” DiAntonio states.
He also identifies other areas that could
benefit from robotics such as convoying
and homeland security. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security currently is
examining the use of robotics in border
control. Much of the technology can
build off previous robotics investments.
WEB RESOURCES
National Robotics Engineering
Center: www.rec.ri.cmu.edu
UPI Program: www.rec.ri.cmu.edu/
projects/upi/index.htm
Crusher: www.rec.ri.cmu.edu/
projects/crusher
U.S. Army Tank-Automotive
Research, Development and
Engineering Center:
http://tardec.army.mil/default.asp
Reprinted with permission from SIGNAL Magazine,
March 2008, Copyright 2008
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