Goals for Today

1
Goals for Today

• Review status of effort as of November 2009
• Continue discussion ofbusiness case analysis
• Continue discussion ofsecurity analysis

2
Agenda

• Arrival Introductions
• 1015-1045 Prof. Seth Teller
• Project Overview
• 1045-1130 Prof. Missy Cummings
• Multiple Robotic Forklift Operations
• 1130-1200 Dan Stock BCA Approach
• 1200-1230 Break for lunch
• Agile Robotics video
• 1230-1300 BCA Discussion
• 1300-1330 Bob Jackson / Ken Wisneski Overview
  of Security Analysis
• 1330-1400 Review Action Items / QA

3
Agile Robotics Team

• Platform
• buildup
• Safety
• intent
• Situational
• awareness
• Planning
• control
• Supervisor
• interface
• Program
• support

Whole-SSA simulation
John Yates Janina Plinsky
MAJ Brooks SSG Trebes
4
Project Summary

• Develop autonomous forklift for military
  logistics
• Address CASCOM LIA requirements / needs
  analyses
• Build upon foundation of DARPA Urban Challenge
• Safe robotic car with real-time perception,
  planning, control
• Avoid DGCs brittle aspects (prior map, precision
  GPS)
• Add novel interface and mobile manipulation
  capabilities
• Demonstrate prototype at end of each year of
  effort

5
Support CASCOM Requirements

• From CASCOM WFO document (Oct 2008)
• Distribution in non-contiguous operations must be
  reliable and effective in accordance with the
  needs of the warfighting units while providing
  adequate protection to crews from small
  arms,IEDs, RPGs, and other threats including
  workplace injuries.
• Improve RAM Reliability, Access,
  Maintainability by 25-50 on distribution
  platforms.
• Need better means to manage and conduct the
  distribution of supplies in a secure manner on
  non-contiguous battlespaces
• Need improved intelligent anticipatory tools and
  capabilities to track, redirect, and manage
  supplies in the distribution chain.
• Anticipatory sustainment decision support tools
  will increase the velocity of Commanders
  decision support cycle.
• Bottom line - robotics material handling
  capability must
• Protect soldiers, reduce logistics footprint,
  increaseefficiency, and do all of the above
  cost-effectively

6
High-Level Strategy

• Understand military users and their logistics
  needs
• Safe, predictable pallet handling in standard
  outdoor SSA
• Start with American-made COTS forklift
• Smallest (3-ton) model suitable for outdoor
  packed earth
• Convert chassis, mast to drive-by-wire operation
• Add servomotors, solenoids under computer control
• Develop interface for natural direction of
  forklift
• Voice gesture camera for bots-eye view to
  indicate objects
• Add sensing, algorithms for situational awareness
• Lidars for terrain, vehicles, pedestrians,
  pallets microphones
• Characterize dynamics, add algorithms for
  actuation
• Plan trajectories to approach, engage, lift,
  transport, place pallet
• Control actuators to achieve desired motion of
  forklift, mast, load
• Handle both predicted and unexpected behaviors of
  world entities

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Ft. Belvoir Demonstration (June 2009)
Issue
Receiving
Bulk yard
Supervisor
ASLs

• 1. Delivery vehicle (flatbed truck) arrives at
  reception area with two pallets
• 2. Supervisor summons autonomous forklift to meet
  arriving truck at Receiving area
• 3. Forklift unloads one pallet, transports it to
  specified outdoor bulk yard ASL
• 4. Forklift fetches, loads second pallet onto
  supervisor-indicated truck in Issue area
• 5. Customer truck departs pickup zone

8
Goals of Funded Follow-on Effort

• Fine-grain (sub-pallet) manipulation
• Robot arms, pallet break-down, box manipulation
• Integration with RFID,NSN, parts catalogs

• Higher-level reasoning
• E.g. moving blocking pallets aside to achieve
  goal
• With supervisor direction, or fully autonomously
• Higher-level direction (e.g., put those pallets
  onto)

Primaryfocus areas

• Passive (video) sensing
• Hand signals
• Monocular or stereo
• More CPU resources
• Cheaper, less emission

• Many forklifts,few supervisors
• Human dispatcher,whole-SSA interface
• Multi-task optimization

Year 1Capability

• Adverse environments
• Mud, rain, snow, dust, sand-storms at night
• GPS-denied conditions (e.g., landmark-based
  navigation)

• Whole-SSA transfer
• Roll up onto many trucks
• Roll out SSA as specified

9
Developments since June 2009 (1)

• Platform improvements
• Alternator power
• Brake actuation
• Roof cabinet wiring
• Ordered two robot arms
• Expected Nov. 2009

10
Developments since June 2009 (2)

• Remote demonstration at AUSA 2009
• Forklift supervisor in Washington, DC
• Forklift in Cambridge, MA (440 miles away)

Video
11
Developments since June 2009 (3)

• Clarified concrete goals for summer 2010
• Team participated in design sessions for
• Mechanical design of base, torso, arms, grippers
• High-level commands
• Sub-pallet manipulation

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