SCU Robotic Systems Lab

Autonomous Ag-Bot Control Congratuations to graduate student Ryan L. who is completing is Masters Degree in Robotics and Automation. Ryan's been working on the use and interpretation of LIDAR sensors to enable in-row steering of one of the RSL agricultural rovers. His system out-performs other published systems that we've identified, and it has been tested extensively at Kings Mountain Vineyards in Woodside. Special thanks to Dr. Manoj Sharma who's the lead on our agbot development program and who's worked closely with Ryan on this capability. Thanks also to other recent students who've been involved in variouis agbot work to include MS student Demilade Kunle-Kunbi, Mechanical Engineering undergraduate Katie Ott , and new MSME graduates Largim Zhuta and Afeez Fakunle. And thanks also to Kristi Bowers from grape.ag, our guardian angel, who's been instrumental in our ability to test the system at Kings Mountain Vinyards.

New NASA Launch - Mission Control Is Busy! The NASA ACS3 spacecraft was successfully launched on April 23 on a RocketLab launch vehicle from a launch site in New Zealand. Since that time, the on-campus RSL mission control room has been busy! The mission is currently in the "commissioning" phase, with operations focused on establishing communication functionality over both UHF and S-Band channels, characterizing vehicle performance, assuring pointing operations, and so on. The deployment of the test solar sail is currently planned for July. Kudos to RSL staff members Scot Tomer and Thomas Heckmen as well as lead graduate student Prajit Saravanan for their great work during this initial operations phase. A large number of graduate and undergraduate students completed SCU's novel academic course in satellite operations and have been conducting contact operations across both day and night shifts. The Lab is hosting a number of NASA personnel on a daily basis in the RSL facility as operations are planned and conducted. We don't have any "student in the ops room" photos available for public release yet, but we will share those when they are available!

Waypoint Profiler Capstone Project Wins Interdisciplinary Best of Session! Congratulations to RSL's interdisciplinary Waypoint Profiler team. This team won the Best of Session honor in one of this year's Senior Design Conference Interdisciplinary Sessions. The team extended the Lab's basic "vertical profiler" system, which goes up and down through the water column to collect data and water samples. This team explored the capability for the profiler to automatically move on the surface of the water between dive locations, using waypoint navigation. The vehicle needs to change its orientation between the "dive" mode and the "travel along the surface" mode. This system is in development for several applications to include work in Lake Tahoe as well as monitoring of an artificial reef off the coast of Southern CA. The video shows a test of the profiler in the MBARI test tank. In the video, the vehicle starts in a floating position on the surface. It then changes orientation and dives. In this test, given the depth constraint of the tank, the vehicle dives to a depth 5 meters and holds its depth. In this mode, it meanders a bit since lateral position and orientation isn't being explicitly controlled (yet). After a brief period of time, it ascends and resumes its orientation along the surface of the water. Congratulations to team members Alexander Collins, Jeffrey Ke, Ricky Schober, and Kevin Wang. Kudos as well to Dr. Michael Neumann for the co-advising work he did with this team.

ALGAE Capstone Project Is a Best of Session Co-Winner Congratulations to RSL's Mechanical Engineering benthic rover team, ALGAE. This team was a co-winner for Best of Session honors in this year's Senior Design Conference. The team developed an initial functional 'benthic rover' that will operate in the shallow waters of Lake Tahoe with an ultimate goal of removing algae growth stimulated by invasive clam species. The rover is tethered and can drive to depths of ~20 meters, which is the depth range of concern. The rover includes a suction device for removal of algae. The hope is that continued evolution of this system will help replace the use of SCUBA divers who currently do this manually, and who are subjected to the risks of high-altitude diving. Congratulations to team members Mate Aranyosi, Julien Buist-Thuillier, Victor Calata-Gentil, Elia Dohler, and Brian Yeh.

Robotic Workcell Capstone Project Wins Best of Session Congratuations to RSL's interdisciplinary Robotic Workcell Team, one of the RSL capstone teams to win Best of Session honors in this year's Senior Design Conference. This team was tasked with creating a multi-stage workcell capable of producing a simple product given the limitations of the available tooling. They choose to create a set of coasters with four different engraved patterns representing different engineering disciplines (gears for mechanical, 1's and 0's for computer, a DNA strand for bioengineering, etc.). They used a set of 3 rotrics dexarms, and they designed several custom end-effectors and workstation tools; they also programmed a modular sequencing software control system to manage overall flow through the workcell. The video shows several cycles at high speed. The sequence consists of picking up a blank coaster from the stockpile, moving it to and placing it within a laser engraving station, engraving a pattern, removing it and placing it on a device to flip it over, moving it to another station where 3 felt feet are installed, moving it to yet another station that presses the feet firmly into position to ensure adhesion, and then finally depositing the finished coaster in a bin. Congratulations to team members Kira Hofelmann, Amy Kiyama, Samuel Lim, Cameron McGinnis, and Alex Torres.

Prosthetic Hand Update Kudos to current graduate student Steven Reimer for his contributions to our low-cost, powered prosthetic hand initiative. This update to the hand is a 1-DOF design which was 3D printed using Nylon powder on the Lab's SLS printer. The video shows the hand in a demo configuration, but in general it is a 6V battery operated, single motor device with several actuation modes to include a myoelectric sensor and a manual switch. Next steps include a new low-cost socket interface, refining the circuit PCB, refining the design of the body and hardware, developing a low-cost approach for volume production of a realistic glove, etc. Thanks to the several waves of RSL students who've contributed to this project in its various forms over the past few years. And thanks to our external supporters to include OP Choudhary as well as Armand and Eliane Neukermans.

Monterey Bay Deployment! Congrats to Dr. Neumann and the RSL crew on a successful Monterey Bay deployment. As part of the day, students from the Marine Operations course completed their final exercise, and the Nautilus and Waypoint Profiler senior capstone teams tested their systems.

FRAMES Reality Goggles! From the Innovators of ChatCAK... A year ago, the Robotic Systems Laboratory unveiled its ChatCAK technology, a PI-enabled (Pure Intelligence) entity with remarkable capabilities to summarize and generate responses to natural language inquiries without suffering from the “hallucinations” (e.g., outright inaccuracies) experienced with other generative technology. This year, RSL has released a beta of FRAMES Reality Goggles. FRAMES (Flawless Reality Anti-Monocle Eyewear System) provide a truly realistic depiction of the world around you, with a level of fidelity and resolution that is precisely that of the human eye. FRAMES Reality Goggles use PRO-V (Pure Reality Ocular Vision), a codeless computational technology developed by the Lab that allows unimpeded visualizations of the local environment. Students, staff and faculty in the lab are now using FRAMES Reality Googles in the development of robotic teleoperation systems; while this work inspired the development of this system, it certainly has far broader possible impacts and applications. Enabled by bio-mimetic design, FRAMES Reality Goggles provide a streamlined and sustainable viewing experience that is not dependent on the cloud, slow wireless communication services, or even batteries. When worn, they seamlessly interact with massively parallel analog computing capabilities to visualize, interpret, and classify elements of one’s environment. FRAMES are lens-less and cordless. They are lighter weight and lower cost than any VR/AR system on the market. They don’t fog, cause discomfort, or suffer from latency. They literally ensure that you remain immersed in the world around you. ChatCAK is True Intelligence. FRAMES are True Vision. Together, there is Nothing Artificial.

A Cat Video? Well, this makes sense if you read the previous post. One of the final graduate mechatronics project [by Hibbs and Jovanovic] was a tilt table that controlled the position of a ball. It can make the ball go to specific locations as well as trace out trajectories, in this case a rough figure 8. For these projects, we often want to show that the control system can correct for disturbances... and in this case, the disturbance is nicely injected by Jordan's cat!

Graduate Mechatronics Projects! Congratulations to the 32 students who've just completed the 2nd graduate advanced mechatronics course as part of their degrees! Those of you who've been through that course sequence may be having flashbacks, so our apologies. The photos here show a few of the great projects that were completed, typically by pairs of students and in just 3 weeks. The upper right photo is of a dual ball positioning systems (one horizontal and one vertical) for which one ball 'follows' the position of the other [created by Vincent Ying and George Kouretas]. The upper right photo shows a tilt table that can move the ball to specific points and even trace a figure 8 [created by Jordan Hibbs and Jagos Jovanovic]. In the lower left is a photo of a trolley that changes it position as fans on a hanging pendulum blow it one way or the other [created by Caleb Sparks and Jack Ninteman]. And in the lower right is a photo of a ball on a tilt platform that positions the ball by blowing fans beneath the beam, with a great overhead camera system that tracks the position of the ball [created by the sister-brother duo of Amy and Matthew Kiyama]. Congratulations to the entire class!