Proposal Number:          21-1- Z3.04-2299

          

          

   

Subtopic Title:
      Autonomous Modular Assembly Technology for On-Orbit Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing (OSAM)

          

          

   

Proposal Title:
      Autonomous Cobots to Enhance Situational Awareness

          

          

   

Firm:

          

TRACLabs, Inc.

          

   

Address:

          

100 North East Loop 410, Suite 520, San Antonio, TX 78216

          

   

Phone:

          

(281) 461-7886                                                                                                                                                                                

          

   

Name:

          

Dr. Michael Lanighan

          

   

E-mail:

          

mlanighan@traclabs.com

          

   

Address:

          

100 North East Loop 410, Suite 520, TX 78216 - 4727

          

   

Phone:

          

(281) 461-7886                                                                                                                                                                                

          

   

Name:

          

David Kortenkamp

          

   

E-mail:

          

korten@traclabs.com

          

   

Address:

          

100 North East Loop 410, Suite 520, TX 78216 - 1234

          

   

Phone:

          

(281) 461-7886                                                                                                                                                                                

          

   

Estimated Technology Readiness Level (TRL) :                                                                                                                                                          
Begin: 2
End: 4

          

          

     

Technical Abstract (Limit 2000 characters, approximately 200 words):

NASA envisions OSAM solutions that involve heterogeneous teams of coordinated service robots.  It will be infeasible to effectively coordinate such teams using existing teleoperation techniques.  To alleviate this issue, TRACLabs is proposing a framework to enhance perceptual feedback and decrease the cognitive load on operators by building upon ideas from active perception, sliding autonomy and  task-level commanding. The resulting system, which we call ACES (Autonomous Cobots to Enhance Situational Awareness), will autonomously position additional robots or sensor systems not currently engaged in a task to autonomously obtain additional meaningful percepts to enhance situational awareness, thus increasing the likelihood of successful task completion.

          

          

     

Potential NASA Applications (Limit 1500 characters, approximately 150 words):

Multi-agent systems will play a vital role in future exploration, construction, assembly, and maintenance tasks. To support the control an automation of these systems tools to enhance situational awareness will be needed. The proposed effort will help address these needs in several NASA efforts including: ISS robots like Astrobee, R2, and SSRMS, Lunar Gateway, Artemis, OSAM missions (OSAM-1, OSAM-2), NASA in-Space Assembled Telescope (iSAT), and Orbital Debris Mitigation.

          

          

     

Potential Non-NASA Applications (Limit 1500 characters, approximately 150 words):

Several Non-NASA applications of the proposed work exist, including projects at Space Force Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC) and
the AFRL Resilient Autonomous Navigation Guidance and Robotic Systems (RANGRS) program. Additionally, the DARPA
Robotic Servicing of Geosynchronous Satellites (RSGS) program is also likely interested in the proposed effort to increase operator situational awareness.

          

          

     

Duration:     6