February 28, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Land
Whether robots are exploring caves on other planets or disaster areas here on Earth, autonomy enables them to navigate extreme environments without human guidance or access to GPS.
The Subterranean Challenge, or SubT, is testing this kind of cutting-edge technology. Sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the contest concluded its second circuit on Wednesday, Feb. 27. Taking first in the competition was CoSTAR, a 12-robot, 60-person team led by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (there were also winners declared for a separate, virtual competition).
SubT is divided into four circuits spread over three years. With each, teams program their robots to navigate a complex underground course. The first contest, held last August, took place in a mine. For the most recent, called the Urban Circuit, teams raced against one another in an unfinished power plant in Elma, Washington.
Each team's robots searched for a set of 20 predetermined objects, earning a point for each find. For the Urban Circuit, CoSTAR earned 16 points; the No. 2 team, with 11 points, was Explorer, led by Carnegie Mellon University.
"The goal is to develop software for our robots that lets them decide how to proceed as they face new surprises," said CoSTAR's team lead Ali Agha of JPL. "These robots are highly autonomous and for the most part make decisions without human intervention."
CoSTAR, which stands for Collaborative SubTerranean Autonomous Robots, brought machines that can roll, walk or fly, depending on what they encounter. Along the way, the bots have to map the environment and find objects like a warm mannequin that simulates a disaster survivor or a lost cellphone with a Wi-Fi signal. This particular course, which aims to simulate an urban environment, also included a carbon dioxide leak and a warm air vent.
Joining the team for the Urban Circuit was a four-legged robot called Spot, which was provided by Boston Dynamics.
"One of the two courses we had to run had multiple levels, so it was great that the Boston Dynamics robots were fantastic on stairs," says Joel Burdick, a Caltech professor and JPL research scientist. He is the leader of the Caltech campus section of the CoSTAR team.
As the bots explore, they send back video and digital maps to a single human supervisor, who they remained in radio contact with for the first 100 feet (30 meters) or so of the course. They can extend that range by dropping communications nodes, a kind of wireless repeater.
Once out of contact, it's up to each robot to decide whether to proceed or backtrack in order to update the team. Each must also rely on fellow robots to access different levels of the course. For example, a wheeled robot might request a quadrupedal one to climb or descend a flight of stairs.
"These courses are very, very challenging, and most of the difficulty lies in communicating with the robots after they've gone out of range," Agha said. "That's critical for NASA: We want to send robots into caves on the Moon or Mars, where they have to explore on their own."
Mapping caves on the Moon or Mars could identify good shelters for future astronauts. Moreover, if it exists at all, microbial life has a better chance of survival under the surface of Mars or within the icy seas of planetary moons, like Europa, Enceladus and Titan. NASA wants to search for life in these regions, where robots would be frequently out of contact.
The next circuit in the Subterranean Challenge will be set in an undisclosed natural cave network this August. A final circuit that blends tunnels, urban environments and natural caves will take place in August of 2021. Teams competing in that final event have the opportunity to win up to $2 million in funding from DARPA.
CoSTAR, includes JPL; Caltech, which manages JPL for NASA; MIT; KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology); Sweden's Lulea University of Technology; and industry partners.
News Media Contact
Andrew Good
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-2433
andrew.c.good@jpl.nasa.gov
2020-041
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2020-041&rn=news.xml&rst=7607
February 18, 2022 | International, Aerospace
The A3R system automatically flies the boom and maintains alignment between the boom tip and the receiver receptacle with an accuracy of a couple of centimeters.
January 14, 2019 | International, Aerospace, Naval
by Michael Peck “The Navy continues to struggle with rebuilding the readiness of the existing fleet due to enduring maintenance and manning challenges,” the report finds. “As the Navy seeks to expand its fleet by 25 percent, these challenges will likely be further exacerbated and the Navy will likely face additional affordability challenges.” The Navy must fix the teething troubles of a new and complicated aircraft that lacks sufficient spare parts: in 2017, only 15 percent of Marine F-35Bs were rated fully mission-capable. “The Navy and the Marine Corps may have to decide whether they are willing to accept less reliable and maintainable aircraft than originally planned,” GAO warned. How can the U.S. Navy buy more ships and planes when it can't maintain the ones it has? That's the question posed by a new Government Accountability Office report . “The Navy continues to struggle with rebuilding the readiness of the existing fleet due to enduring maintenance and manning challenges,” the report finds. “As the Navy seeks to expand its fleet by 25 percent, these challenges will likely be further exacerbated and the Navy will likely face additional affordability challenges.” Auditors point to seven problems that GAO, Congress's watchdog agency, have highlighted over the past several years, but which have yet to solved: Training: After a series of embarrassing collisions at sea in 2017, which led to fears that Navy has forgotten basic ship-handling skills, training was revamped along with fewer waivers for required training. Still, “while the Navy has demonstrated its commitment to ensuring that crews are certified prior to deploying, training for amphibious operations and higher-level collective training may not be fully implemented for several years.” Maintenance backlogs: Between 2012 and 2018, only 30 percent of maintenance was completed on schedule. In particular, most Navy attack submarines have suffered maintenance delays. The backlog is caused by insufficient capacity in public shipyards as well as shortages of shipyard workers. Overworked sailors: In 2017, GAO concluded that the Navy was underestimating how many sailors were needed to man ships, leading to undersized crews and overworked sailors. The Navy says it is aiming for surface ships based overseas to have a minimum of 95 percent of their complement, but GAO auditors who interviewed crews in Japan were told that “the Navy's methods for tracking fit and fill do not account for sailor experience and may be inaccurately capturing the actual presence of sailors onboard and available for duty on its ships. Moreover, sailors consistently told us that ship workload has not decreased, and it is still extremely challenging to complete all required workload while getting enough sleep.” Unrealistic budgeting: The Navy wants to boost the number of ships by 25 percent, and is planning to buy 301 new ships between now and 2048 as well as extending the life of older destroyers and submarines. But GAO and the Congressional Budget Office have calculated that the Navy “has consistently and significantly underestimated the cost and timeframes for delivering new ships to the fleet. For example, the Navy estimates that buying the new ships specified in the fiscal year 2019 plan would cost $631 billion over 30 years while the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that those new ships would cost $801 billion—a difference of 27 percent.” Aging aircraft: Numerous aircraft models across the Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps have been plagued by low availability rates due to aging aircraft, lack of spare parts for older planes, and too few mechanics. Too few pilots: The shortage of Marine Corps fighter pilots quadrupled to 24 percent between 2006 and 2017, while the Navy has been scrambling to fill pilot vacancies. “Further compounding their pilot shortages, we also found that the services have not recently reevaluated squadron requirements to reflect an increased fighter pilot workload,” said GAO. “As a result, the reported shortage actually could be greater.” The F-35: The Navy must fix the teething troubles of a new and complicated aircraft that lacks sufficient spare parts: in 2017, only 15 percent of Marine F-35Bs were rated fully mission-capable. “The Navy and the Marine Corps may have to decide whether they are willing to accept less reliable and maintainable aircraft than originally planned,” GAO warned. Michael Peck is a contributing writer for the National Interest. He can be found on Twitter and Facebook. https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/sink-feeling-navys-7-big-problems-one-f-35-41502
July 16, 2019 | International, C4ISR
Corp. (NASDAQ: CMTL) announced today, that during the fourth quarter of fiscal 2019, its Command & Control Technologies group, through its Maryland-based subsidiary, Comtech Mobile Datacom Corporation, which is part of Comtech's Government Solutions segment, was awarded $4.2 million in rapid innovation funding from the U.S. Army for an enhanced version of Comtech's next generation MT-2025 Blue Force Tracking (“BFT”) satellite terminal that will incorporate a dual-mode BFT satellite transceiver and new antenna nulling technology. Comtech's next generation MT-2025 transceiver, which is also known as the Blue Force Tracker-2 High Capacity ("BFT-2-HC") Satellite Transceiver, meets BFT-2 protocols, provides best-in-class reliability and is fully backward compatible with the U.S. Army's Blue-Force Tracking-1 system ("BFT-1"). “These awards demonstrate the Army's high confidence in Comtech's BFT technology and innovation capabilities that can be used on future BFT systems,” said Fred Kornberg, President and Chief Executive Officer of Comtech Telecommunications Corp. “Comtech remains committed to providing the U.S. Army and its soldiers with the most innovative technology, enabling them to successfully complete all their missions, regardless of electronic warfare environments.” Comtech currently provides sustaining support for the U.S Army's BFT-1 system and previously shipped over 100,000 BFT-1 mobile satellite transceivers. The Command & Control Technologies group is a leading provider of mission-critical, highly-mobile C4ISR solutions. Comtech Telecommunications Corp. designs, develops, produces and markets innovative products, systems and services for advanced communications solutions. The Company sells products to a diverse customer base in the global commercial and government communications markets. Certain information in this press release contains statements that are forward-looking in nature and involve certain significant risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially from such forward-looking information. The Company's Securities and Exchange Commission filings identify many such risks and uncertainties. Any forward-looking information in this press release is qualified in its entirety by the risks and uncertainties described in such Securities and Exchange Commission filings. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190716005226/en