Enhancing Tele-robotics with Immersive Virtual Reality
Abstract
The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year (FY) 2016 and the Department of Defense (DoD) Appropriations Act for 2015 allocated $20M to assist Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Minority-Serving Institutions (HBCU/MI). The program aims to (a) enhance research programs and capabilities in scientific and engineering disciplines critical to the national security functions of DoD; (b) enhance the capacity of HBCU/MI to participate in defense research programs and activities; and (c) increase the number of graduates, including underrepresented minorities, in field of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) that are important to the defense mission. The FY 2016 DoD HBCU/MI Research and Education Program Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) solicited proposals from single investigators at HBCUs and MIs for the acquisition equipment and instrumentation in scientific areas important to one or more the three defense research offices, namely: Army Research Office (ARO); Office of Naval Research (ONR); and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR). In addition to supporting research for a 12-month period, each grant will support up to four students with tuition, stipends, fees, and other justified expenses. The proposed project will develop a fundamental framework for establishing an immersive virtual reality environment for robust and scalable human robotics interaction in a cooperative intelligent architecture at the University of Houston-Victoria (UHV). The requested equipment and instrumentation will be integrated into their existing motion capture facilities and will complement their current research and educational capabilities in virtual reality and robotics tele-presence and tele-operation. Furthermore, the resulting integration will provide new avenues of research in multi-agent virtual tele-robotics as well as educational tools to engage more under-represented students in STEM.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- May 22, 2017
- Source ID
- W911NF1610473
Entities
People
- Alireza Tavakkoli
Organizations
- Army Contracting Command
- Office of the Secretary of Defense
- Texas A&M University–Victoria