With their loved ones sometimes deployed far away from home, potentially in harm’s way, the families of soldiers face challenging circumstances that can place a strain on everyday life. (more…)
A new mobile autonomous robot could perform daily monitoring tasks while safely interacting with chickens in commercial chicken houses, according to researchers at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI). This advance could help farmers reduce the likelihood of disease outbreaks, lessen their labor costs, and allow them the freedom to take on more important tasks. (more…)
A two-armed robot named Tarzan, swinging along elevated cables, could allow farmers to monitor fields continuously at lower cost while avoiding interference with plants.
“Swinging – or brachiation – is an energy-efficient way to travel because gravity is doing most of the work,” said Ai-Ping Hu, a senior research engineer at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI). The lightweight robot has aluminum arms and 3D-printed hands with sensors. The eight-pound robot swings back and forth with one hand on the cable, gaining momentum until its second hand detects the cable overhead and grips it. This swinging motion replicates a gibbon’s movement along a tree limb or vine. (more…)
In emergencies, people may trust robots too much for their own safety, a new study suggests. In a mock building fire, test subjects followed instructions from an “Emergency Guide Robot” even after the machine had proven itself unreliable – and after some participants were told that robot had broken down. (more…)
To get the best care for her three autistic children, Mandi Larkin would drive three hours from her family’s home in Tifton, Ga., to Marcus Autism Center in Atlanta. The drive to and from Atlanta was exhausting. Missed work, missed school and the long drive were constant sources of stress. (more…)
Today’s modeling and simulation (M&S) software provides indispensible tools for systems engineering challenges. Such programs allow investigators to experiment with “what-ifs” by adjusting design parameters and examining potential outcomes.
A team from the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) has produced an advanced web-based tool that lets physically separated participants collaborate on model-based systems engineering projects. Known as the Framework for Assessing Cost and Technology (FACT), the program utilizes open-source software components to allow users to visualize a system’s potential expense alongside its performance, reliability and other factors. (more…)
Antenna technology originally developed to quickly send and receive information through a software-defined military radio may soon be used to transmit ocean data from a wave-powered autonomous surface vehicle. The technology, the lowest-power method for maintaining a satellite uplink, automatically compensates for the movement of the antenna as the boat bobs around on the ocean surface.
The Agile Aperture Antenna technology developed by the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) is expected to provide a more reliable and faster method of transmitting video, audio and environmental data – such as salinity, temperature, fluorescence and dissolved oxygen – from an ocean vehicle to land via satellite. (more…)
Improvised explosive devices (IEDs) are becoming a global problem for the U.S. armed forces. To prevent injuries to soldiers and provide better care to those who are injured, the U.S. military is striving to better understand how blasts impact the human body.
In 2011 the Army’s Rapid Equipping Force (REF) approached the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) as part of the DOD Information Analysis Center (IAC) program to develop a system that measures the physical environment of an explosion and collects data that can be used to correlate what the soldier experienced with long-term medical outcomes, especially traumatic brain injury. The solution: the Integrated Blast Effect Sensor Suite (IBESS). IBESS is the first system to acquire integrated, time-tagged data during an explosive event – whether soldiers are on the ground or riding in a vehicle – and can later help recreate a holistic picture of what happened. (more…)
