As shown by the Phoenix Mars Lander’s Thermal and Electrical Conductivity Probe (TECP), contact measurements of thermal conductivity and diffusivity (using a modified flux-plate or line-source heat-pulse method) are constrained by a number of factors. Robotic...

An interface bracket and coordinate transformation matrices were designed to allow the Range 7 scanner to be mounted on the PaR Robot detector arm for scanning the heat shield or other object placed in the test cell. A process was designed for using Rapid Form XOR to stitch data from...

Several missions and instruments in the conceptual design phase rely on the technique of interferometry to create detectable fringe patterns. The intimate emplacement of reflective material upon electron device cells based upon chalcogenide material technology permits high-speed, predictable deformation of the reflective...

An algorithm denoted “Gamma-SLAM” performs further processing, in real time, of preprocessed digitized images acquired by a stereoscopic pair of electronic cameras aboard an off-road robotic ground vehicle to build accurate maps of the terrain and determine the location of the vehicle with respect to the...

AEGSE Virtuoso Charting is an application that enables animated, real-time charting of telemetry streams of data from a rover. These automatically scaled charts are completely interactive, and allow users to choose the variables that they want to monitor. The charts can process...

BGen software was designed for auto-generation of code based on a graphical representation of a behavior network used for controlling automatic vehicles. A common format used for describing a behavior network, such as that used in the JPL-developed behavior-based control system, CARACaS [“Control...

The Excavator Design Validation tool verifies excavator designs by automatically generating control systems and modeling their performance in an accurate simulation of their expected environment. Part of this software design includes interfacing with human operations that can be included in simulation-based studies and...

The mixed real/virtual operator interface for ATHLETE (MSim-ATHLETE) is a new software system for operating manipulation and inspection tasks in JPL’s ATHLETE (All-Terrain Hex-Legged Extra-Terrestrial Explorer). The system presents the operator with a graphical model of the robot and a palette of...

A glove containing force sensors has been built as a prototype of tactile sensor arrays to be worn on human hands and anthropomorphic robot hands. Whereas the force sensors of a prior force-sensing glove are mounted on the outside, the force sensors of this glove are mounted inside, in protective...

The Reconfigurable Robust Routing for Mobile Outreach Network (R3MOON) provides advanced communications networking technologies suitable for the lunar surface environment and applications. The R3MOON technology is based on a detailed concept of operations tailored for lunar surface networks,...

Compact, lightweight servo-controllable brakes capable of high torques are being developed for incorporation into robot joints. A brake of this type is based partly on the capstan effect of tension elements, which is described by the well known equation

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California A robotic arm that consists of three joints with four degrees of freedom (DOF) has been developed. It can carry an end-effector to acquire and transfer samples by using...

The two-axis joint is a mechanical device that provides two-degrees-of-freedom motion between connected components. A compact, moment-resistant, twoaxis joint is used to connect an electromechanical actuator to its driven structural members. Due to the requirements of the overall mechanism, the...

A mission reliability estimation method has been designed to translate mission requirements into choices of robot modules in order to configure a multi-robot team to have high reliability at minimal cost. In order to build cost- effective robot teams for long-term missions, one must be able...