OVER PREVIOUS PHASE I, II, AND III NASA SBIR PROJECTS, TRACLABS HAS CREATED A SOFTWARE TOOLKIT FOR PROGRAMM…

Public award description

OVER PREVIOUS PHASE I, II, AND III NASA SBIR PROJECTS, TRACLABS HAS CREATED A SOFTWARE TOOLKIT FOR PROGRAMMING AND CONTROLLING HUMANOID ROBOTS AND OTHER MOBILE MANIPULATORS. THIS OPEN-SOURCE TOOLKIT, CALLED THE CARTESIAN-BASED AFFORDANCE TEMPLATE SUITE FOR MANIPULATION (OR CRAFTSMAN), INCORPORATES STATE-OF-THE-ART MOTION GENERATION TECHNIQUES ALONG WITH PRINCIPLES OF USER INTERFACE DESIGN AND SOFTWARE ENGINEERING TO FILL A GAP IN THE ROBOTICS RESEARCH COMMUNITY FOR ADVANCED SENSOR-DRIVEN APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT. WHILE THIS TOOLKIT WAS INITIALLY SUPPORTED BY NASA, FURTHER SUPPORT FROM A LARGE-SCALE AUTOMOTIVE CLIENT AND ROBOTICS MANUFACTURERS HAS ALLOWED TRACLABS TO MATURE THE CODE-BASE FOR ITS DEPLOYMENT IN INDUSTRIAL AND COMMERCIAL CONTEXTS. DESPITE THIS COMMERCIALIZATION SUCCESS, THE CAPABILITIES OF CRAFTSMAN MOTION CONTROL HAVE MAINLY BEEN FOCUSED ON A SMALL SET OF ROBOT-INDEPENDENT TRAJECTORY GENERATION ALGORITHMS, AND THE DEPLOYMENT OF THE SYSTEM HAS BEEN LIMITED TO CLASSES OF MANIPULATION TASKS WHERE GOALS CAN BE REPRESENTED AS SPATIAL WAYPOINTS FOR THE ROBOT S END EFFECTORS OR NAVIGATION SYSTEMS. IT IS THE GOAL OF THIS WORK TO REFACTOR CRAFTSMAN INTO A MORE GENERAL PLUGIN-BASED CONTROL FRAMEWORK THAT SUPPORTS TECHNIQUES FOR ADVANCED MOTION PLANNING, REACTIVE CONTROL, AND AUTOMOUS STANCE LOCATION. WE ARGUE THAT THIS REFACTOR WOULD BE BENEFICIAL BY PROVIDING A COMMON APPLICATION PROGRAMMING FRAMEWORK THAT CAN BE USED ON MULTIPLE SYSTEMS IN A VARIETY OF ENVIRONMENTS, AND WHERE NEW FUNCTIONALITY CAN QUICKLY BE INTEGRATED TO FACILITATE A NUMBER OF NASA-RELEVANT MISSIONS. WE CALL THIS NEXT GENERATION OF OUT TOOLKIT