Department(s):

School of Engineering

Image removed.Congratulations to WPI Mechanical and Robotics Engineering Professor Greg Fischer for his NSF Award entitled:  NRI:  Collaborative Research Software Framework for Research in Semi-Autonomous Teleoperation.  This award is a collaborative effort between WPI, University of Washington, and Johns Hopkins University through the National Robotics Initiative (NRI) program.

This work will support the development of a collaborative open hardware and software infrastructure to support research and education in cutting edge human-robot collaborative areas such as semi-autonomous teleoperation and medical robotics. While the infrastructure originates in the medically inspired Raven-II and dVRK robotic surgery platforms, this proposal targets the needs of a much larger community via the integration of other robots and haptic devices and simulated robots. The impact of this proposal is:

  1. The project will enable and accelerate research in multiple technical areas (e.g., human/robot collaboration, supervised autonomy, 3D augmented reality user interfaces), and in multiple application domains (e.g., robotic surgery, industrial, space and undersea robotics).
  2. It will provide a simulation environment for teaching large groups of students in the context of a vibrant community, and support existing and future robust hardware/software platforms for hands-on research experience for smaller groups of students.
  3. Most of the software infrastructure will be usable with other platforms.
  4. Through the common API and simulation framework, it will ease barriers to entry for new researchers to apply their ideas to this growing field.