NASA STTR 2012 Solicitation

SMALL BUSINESS CONCERN (SBC):		RESEARCH INSTITUTION (RI):
NAME:	Prioria Robotics	NAME:	University of Florida
STREET:	104 N Main St Ste 200	STREET:	219 Grinter Hall
CITY:	Gainesville	CITY:	Gainesville
STATE/ZIP:	FL  32601 - 5320	STATE/ZIP:	FL  32611 - 5500
PHONE:	(352) 505-2188	PHONE:	(352) 392-9447

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR/PROJECT MANAGER (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Walter Lee Hunt
lee.hunt@prioria.com
104 N Main St Ste 200
Gainesville, FL 32601 - 5320
(352) 505-2188 Extension :113

CORPORATE/BUSINESS OFFICIAL (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Bryan da Frota
bryan.dafrota@prioria.com
104 N Main St Ste 200
Gainesville, FL 32601 - 5320
(352) 505-2188 Extension :101

Estimated Technology Readiness Level (TRL) at beginning and end of contract:
Begin: 2
End: 3

Technology Available (TAV) Subtopics
Autonomous Navigation in GNSS-Denied Environments is a Technology Available (TAV) subtopic that includes NASA Intellectual Property (IP). Do you plan to use the NASA IP under the award?
No

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT (Limit 2000 characters, approximately 200 words)
The proposed solution exploits recent advances in computer vision to conceive of a single-camera + gyro + accelerometer vision-based navigation solution such that the processing will be lightweight (requiring only a single optical flow sample per frame). Known landmarks (natural or artificial) will have absolute positions known to planetary exploration worker robots. The worker robot can identify it's absolute position by observing known landmark features and deriving range from the raw attitude sensor data and the video stream. By observing one or more landmark features during camera motion, the position uncertainty of the range and bearing from the vehicle can be estimated. Each range / bearing measurement to known landmarks acts as a constraint for the camera position in the landmark navigation space (which may be arbitrarily defined and not oriented the same as the global navigation frame). Combining the worker's rough knowledge of it's own position can further reduce the position error estimates.

The single-camera passive ranging technology leverages Navy SBIR funded work for early simulation tasks.

POTENTIAL NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (Limit 1500 characters, approximately 150 words)
NASA can use this technology for navigation by small robots on other planets, where GNSS, magnetometer, and UTC time may not be known with accuracy. NASA could integrate this technology into a landmark navigation failsafe for it's UAS fleet for when GPS and/or magnetometers are jammed or unavailable for environmental reasons.

POTENTIAL NON-NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (Limit 1500 characters, approximately 150 words)
Prioria will integrate this technology into it's Maveric SUAS as a landmark navigation failsafe when the GPS and/ or magnetometer is jammed or unavailable. The technology could also be transitioned to commercial ground robots and VTOL robots.

TECHNOLOGY TAXONOMY MAPPING (NASA's technology taxonomy has been developed by the SBIR-STTR program to disseminate awareness of proposed and awarded R/R&D in the agency. It is a listing of over 100 technologies, sorted into broad categories, of interest to NASA.)

Aerodynamics Attitude Determination & Control Avionics (see also Control and Monitoring) Image Processing Inertial Inertial (see also Sensors) Optical Optical/Photonic (see also Photonics) Perception/Vision Positioning (Attitude Determination, Location X-Y-Z) Ranging/Tracking Robotics (see also Control & Monitoring; Sensors) Telemetry/Tracking (Cooperative/Noncooperative; see also Planetary Navigation, Tracking, & Telemetry)