RACE pulls for shared control

Maintaining and supporting an aircraft fleet, in a climate of reduced manpower and financial resources, dictates effective utilization of robotics and automation technologies. To help develop a winning robotics and automation program the Air Force Logistics Command created the Robotics and Automation Center of Excellence (RACE). RACE is a command wide focal point. Race is an organic source of expertise to assist the Air Logistic Center (ALC) product directorates in improving process productivity through the judicious insertion of robotics and automation technologies. RACE is a champion for pulling emerging technologies into the aircraft logistic centers. One of those technology pulls is shared control. Small batch sizes, feature uncertainty, and varying work load conspire to make classic industrial robotic solutions impractical. One can view ALC process problems in the context of space robotics without the time delay. The ALC's will benefit greatly from the implementation of a common architecture that supports a range of control actions from fully autonomous to teleoperated. Working with national laboratories and private industry, we hope to transition shared control technology to the depot floor. This paper provides an overview of the RACE internal initiatives and customer support, with particular emphasis on production processes that will benefit from shared control technology

Computer- and robot-assisted Medical Intervention

Medical robotics includes assistive devices used by the physician in order to make his/her diagnostic or therapeutic practices easier and more efficient. This chapter focuses on such systems. It introduces the general field of Computer-Assisted Medical Interventions, its aims, its different components and describes the place of robots in that context. The evolutions in terms of general design and control paradigms in the development of medical robots are presented and issues specific to that application domain are discussed. A view of existing systems, on-going developments and future trends is given. A case-study is detailed. Other types of robotic help in the medical environment (such as for assisting a handicapped person, for rehabilitation of a patient or for replacement of some damaged/suppressed limbs or organs) are out of the scope of this chapter.Comment: Handbook of Automation, Shimon Nof (Ed.) (2009) 000-00

Space biology initiative program definition review. Trade study 1: Automation costs versus crew utilization

A significant emphasis upon automation within the Space Biology Initiative hardware appears justified in order to conserve crew labor and crew training effort. Two generic forms of automation were identified: automation of data and information handling and decision making, and the automation of material handling, transfer, and processing. The use of automatic data acquisition, expert systems, robots, and machine vision will increase the volume of experiments and quality of results. The automation described may also influence efforts to miniaturize and modularize the large array of SBI hardware identified to date. The cost and benefit model developed appears to be a useful guideline for SBI equipment specifiers and designers. Additional refinements would enhance the validity of the model. Two NASA automation pilot programs, 'The Principal Investigator in a Box' and 'Rack Mounted Robots' were investigated and found to be quite appropriate for adaptation to the SBI program. There are other in-house NASA efforts that provide technology that may be appropriate for the SBI program. Important data is believed to exist in advanced medical labs throughout the U.S., Japan, and Europe. The information and data processing in medical analysis equipment is highly automated and future trends reveal continued progress in this area. However, automation of material handling and processing has progressed in a limited manner because the medical labs are not affected by the power and space constraints that Space Station medical equipment is faced with. Therefore, NASA's major emphasis in automation will require a lead effort in the automation of material handling to achieve optimal crew utilization

NASA SBIR abstracts of 1990 phase 1 projects

The research objectives of the 280 projects placed under contract in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) 1990 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase 1 program are described. The basic document consists of edited, non-proprietary abstracts of the winning proposals submitted by small businesses in response to NASA's 1990 SBIR Phase 1 Program Solicitation. The abstracts are presented under the 15 technical topics within which Phase 1 proposals were solicited. Each project was assigned a sequential identifying number from 001 to 280, in order of its appearance in the body of the report. The document also includes Appendixes to provide additional information about the SBIR program and permit cross-reference in the 1990 Phase 1 projects by company name, location by state, principal investigator, NASA field center responsible for management of each project, and NASA contract number

Design concepts for low-cost composite turbofan engine frame

Design concepts for low cost, lightweight composite engine frames were applied to the design requirements for the frame of a commercial, high bypass engine. Four alternative composite frame design concepts identified which consisted of generic type components and subcomponents that could be adapted to use in different locations in the engine and the different engine sizes. A variety of materials and manufacturing methods were projected with a goal for the lowest number of parts at the lowest possible cost. After a preliminary evaluation of all four frame concepts, two designs were selected for an extended design and evaluation which narrowed the final selection down to one frame that was significantly lower in cost and slighty lighter than the other frame. An implementation plan for this lowest cost frame is projected for future development and includes prospects for reducing its weight with proposed unproven, innovative fabrication techniques