The Department of Defense deploys large numbers of unmanned vehicles, all of which could benefit from increased capabilities in their operator control units. In particular, our work will provide greater situational awareness to the operators and enable them to explore the effects of actions before actually committing the commands. Congress has mandated that one-third of all military vehicles must be unmanned by 2015. Robotic customers such as US Army TACOM, US Navy SPAWAR, NAVEODTECHDIV, Joint Ground Robotics Enterprise (JGRE), as well as major robotics contractors such as iRobot and QinetiQ are striving to deliver more autonomy in their systems. Together these markets total several thousand potential licenses -- one for each platform. TRACLabs Inc. is a member of the JRGE-sponsored Robotics Technology Consortium, which gives us access to government and industry robotics customers.
Lunar Surface Systems (LSS). This program is developing concepts for lunar habitation and robotics infrastructure. Hardware testbeds such as the Habitat Demonstration Unit (HDU) and the Lunar Electric Rover (LER) are being produced and tested in analog environments. Our work will flow immediately into these tests, greatly enhancing remote commanding capabilities across time delay. LSS contacts are Robert Ambrose of NASA Johnson Space Center and Terry Fong of NASA Ames Research Center.
More »