- Photo
of the Month
- The RSL UAV team uses one
of the Lab's octocopters to map Aver Family Winery in
Gilroy, CA.
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- News
New Publication
on Multi-Robot Adaptive Navigation: Thomas Adamek
is the lead author on a new article on multi-robot
gradient-based adaptive navigation, which has been accepted
for publication in the ASME/IEEE Transactions on Mechatronics.
New Publication
on RSL's Underwater Multi-Robot Testbed: Dr.
Kitts presented a conference paper on RSL's new
underwater multi-robot testbed at the IEEE AUV 2014
conference in Oxford Mississippi in October.
The paper describes the testbed and initial results
in successfully demonstrating multi-robot underwater
formation control. Paper co-authors included
Thomas Adamek, Mike Vlahos, Anne Mahacek, Killian
Poore, Jorge Guerra, Michael Neumann, Matthew Chin,
and Mike Rasay.
- Resources
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- Courses
Planned for
Winter 2015
- ENGR / MECH
371 Space
System Design & Engineering I
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- ENGR 379
Satellite Operations
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- New Mobile
Mission Control Station for Satellite and UAV Field Operations
- RSL has just rolled
out its new mobile command and control station. This
is a 28 ft trailer (pulled by a diesel pickup truck) that
houses a set of control workstations, racks of
communications equipment, and a number of radio antenna,
to include a 2.4 meter deployable parabolic dish for
communicating with NASA spacecraft. Funded by an
internal SCU grant and now "wrapped" with a
space-themed design, the station has already been featured
at the NASA Ames 75 year anniversary Open House (which had
more than 120,000 people) as well as at SCU's own Grand
Reunion Weekend. Work on the station continues in
order to get all of its radio communications equipment
installed. RSL hopes to have the station fully
operational in early 2015 so that it is ready to support
the next round of NASA small satellite launches - RSL will
be controlling these satellites as it has been doing over
the past decade.
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- [Courtesy Chuck Barry, Santa Clara
University]
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- UAV
Systems and Applications Taking Off
- [Courtesy Mike Rasay, Robotic
Systems Laboratory]
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- RSL is ramping up its efforts
with Unmanned Aerial Systems, having acquired a
variety of new octocopter and fixed wing platforms
and initiating a number of new activities to provide
drone-based services to local partners and
collaborators. Payloads for these vehicles
include a high resolution visible camera (for aerial
mapping), a near-IR camera (for vegetation
monitoring), and a FLIR IR camera (for thermal
monitoring); through a new partnership with Intel,
the Lab has also acquired a multispectral imager for
enhanced vegetation monitoring.
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- Applications that are now
being prototyped include aerial mapping (to include
recent work done in Lake Tahoe for conservation
biologists), solar panel inspection and vegetation
monitoring (for SCU's own facilities department),
and vegetation and irrigation monitoring for local
wineries.
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- The Lab also has developed the
ability to use drone-based imagery in order to
create photorealistic three-dimensional models of
large scale objects, like building (SCU's solar
house), and landforms (like Fannette Island, the
island in the middle of Emerald Bay, Lake Tahoe).
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- RSL is leading a new university
group focused on UAV education, services and
research. Member institutions include Bucknell
Univ, Ohiio Northern Univ, St. Louis Univ, Milwaukee
School of Engineering, Union College, and Mercer
University. These schools kicked off their
collaboration at a Spring 2014 workshop hosted by
SCU and are now jointly developing curricula and
project-based opportunities for students to engage
in both real world engineering and real world
entrepreneurial enterprise operations. This
activity is being conducted through the auspices of
the KEEN network, a foundation- sponsored program
focused on instilling the entrepreneurial mindset in
undergraduate engineers.
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- Fall
Underwater Robotics Deployment
- RSL
staff member Thomas Adamek and graduate students
Michael Neumann and Jasmine Cashbaugh led a number
of students in an underwater robotics deployment in
Monterey Bay in mid-October as part of the ENGR 180
Marine Operations course. Students learned how
to deploy and pilot the Triton tethered underwater
robot. Guests included Fr. John Rose Santiago
and program mentor Lloyd Droppers.
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- Thanks
to AGI for their support of our program!
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- Underwater
3-D Imaging
- RSL
has been using photogrammetric techniques to create
high-resolution 3-dimensional underwater images,
such as the one produced for this sunken rowboat
found in Emerald Bay, Lake Tahoe in September 2014.
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- [Courtesy: RSL Marine Robotics Team and 3-D Photogrammetry
Team]
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