University Daily Kansan / Thursday, February 13, 1992
9
KU team builds space-station robot
Atthe Kansas Augmented Telerobotic Laboratory in Nichols Hall, on West Campus, Ray Dick, Mount Hope graduate student, guides one arm of the Dual-Aarm Kraft Bilateral Feedback Telerobotic System.
By Janet Rorholm
Kansan staff writer
The Kansas Augmented Telerobotics Laboratory is working on the technology for a robot that could be used to help build a planned NASA space station.
Researchers at the lab, situated at the Space Technology Center on West Campus, have been working on the robot since 1989.
The arms of the robot are important to the space-station project because they could cut down on the time an astronaut spends in space, said Terry Faddis, associate professor of mechanical engineering.
Faddis and 11 people have been working on adding senses to the robot, such as sight, touch and sound, to help the astronaut.
The original version of the robot was used underwater from oil rigs and was not made to perform delicate space-assembly tasks. Faddis said.
It will take about 3,000 hours of
outer space to build the station, Fadda
and its crew.
Bryan Greenway, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, has been working on adding the sense of touch to the robot. He has added a lever to the hand grip so the astronauts can gauge the amount of pressure they are applying.
"At first, it doesn't seem like you can make the connection, but after you've used something like that for awhile it very quickly becomes second nature," Faddis said.
The team also is working on both a voice-activated system and a way to give the robot more control of its operations.
People working on the project compared the prototype to the robot arms used in the movie "Aliens." Astronauts would control the robot — also called a telerobotic — from inside the space capsule with their hands.
"The whole concept of this system is making the astronaut feel like he is out at the site, where those telerobotics are," Faddis said. "So we're trying to develop something called better telepresence."
Telepresence is trying to feed more information back to the operator of the robot while they are running it, he said.
One of the team's goals is to achieve autonomous control, which means that the computer would be intelligent enough to do certain tasks without a human operator. Faddiss said.
The team is testing how effective its work is by using volunteers who know nothing about teierobotics, Greenway said. The team will tape and time the volunteer doing tasks with and without the additions of the senses to see how helpful they really are and where they need to be improved.
The KU telerobotics team works in cooperation with NASA, Kansas Technology Enterprise Corp. of Topeka,
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and Kraft Telerobotics of Lenexa
Kraft supplied the arms and the basic computer system, which has been rebuilt and improved by the team. Faddis said.
Kraft also donated much of the $400,000 it took to start the project, he said. More than $1 million has been invested in the project.
The project could be profitable for the University and its sponsors
through the sale of any marketable patents that are developed, he said.
The project has garnered interest from outside the University.
McDonnell Douglas Space Systems of Huntington Beach, Calif., is working on a contract with KU to develop the technology for a robot, not only for the space station, but also for other tasks such as working with hazardous waste materials, said Steve
He said KU had one of the most advanced programs in telerobotics in the nation.
Fleichaker, engineer research scientist and developer for McDonnell Douglas.
Fleichhaker said KU has already spent a lot of time on the project and made a lot of progress.
"We see a lot of potential there," he said.
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