Surround Visual & Sensory Feedback for Robotic Arm Pilots

NASA applications that could be considered are: (1) Adaptation of the robotic arms onto an assistive free flyer capable of autonomously monitoring the environment. When an anomaly is present, the human operator can control and manipulate the environment with the robotic arms with full surround sensors. (2) Repair satellites will be required in the future, and full autonomy is unable to predict every anomaly and complexity. This system will require a human-in-the-loop with immersive technology and surround sensors. (3) Canadarm augmentation will be necessary as space stations grow, and humans are required to operate closer to moving robotic objects in space. Full system surround knowledge will be required with a human-in-the-loop at all times for risk reduction. (4) Rover robotic arms and/or backpack arms and/or quadcopter arms and/or ATHLETE robotic arms: human-in-the-loop robotic arm manipulation is required for non-redundant, risk adverse space environments. (5) As NASA plans to build structures on the moon and Mars utilizing robotic technicians, there will need to be a ?supervisory robotic assistant with situational awareness and full dexterity to control fully autonomous robots.

Non-NASA Applications are: (1) Prosthetics: brain training whereby the physical therapist moves his/her arm and the amputee?s arm moves in succession. Brain waves can be monitored and trained to then move in that same motion. Never before have physical therapists and robotics been able to interact in such a way. (2) Education: STEM students will bring about change by understanding how they can help others with a tool where they have surround situational awareness and can manipulate the environment remotely. (3) Extreme Work Environments: Swift Engineering uses freezers and autoclaves in daily operation. If the engineering staff could enter an immersive environment and enter the freezer to remove need prepreg material rolls, time and energy costs would be reduced from the standard of opening up the freezer manually up to 50 times a day. If a vacuum sealed bag leaks in the autoclave, an engineer could fix it remotely without opening the autoclave, and hundreds of parts a year would not be affected. (4) Underwater vehicles: At extreme depths submarines need a better method to control the robotic arms that are on the front of their submarines. If pilots were inside the submarine, and could manipulate the robotic arm similar to their own arm, control would be vastly superior to current methods. (5) Hazardous material storage, disposal, or bomb disposal robots require dexteritys and full situation awareness in often very tight areas. More »