This award is for the purchase of equipment for the high speed acquisition of images and for manipulator end-effector hardware. The image equipment is needed for real-time performance and the end-effector hardware is needed for experimentation with manipulation tasks. The equipment is also used in integrating vision and manipulation tasks incorporating perception, cognition, and action. Applied robotics involves the integration of many areas including vision research, control research, sensor integration, and planning algorithms. This proposal requests funds for the purchase of equipment to support vision research and manipulator research. The vision equipment will allow real time processing of visual data while the manipulators (grippers, etc.) will allow the testing of manipulator algorithms with the robot arm connected to actual manipulators.
