Resources

NAS Lab is located in room 300/301 on the third floor of Mechanical Engineering – Engineering Mechanics (MEEM) building at Michigan Technological University. The area of the lab is approximately 1000 sq-ft. 

The lab is equipped with the Qualisys motion capture camera system used to mimic GPS and act as a reference for actual vs. predicted motion characteristics. The 8 Oqus 300 cameras give approximately 250 square feet of vision to accurately track robots and their obstacles. Qualysis track manager software provides very accurate 2D, 3D, and 6DOF tracking.

The lab uses robots on land, underwater, and in the air to validate the developed algorithms for different applications.

There are four Husky robots from Clearpath that can be used in the lab and outdoors. They are currently equipped with a WidowX robotic arm, a SMART6-L GPS Antenna, a 3DM-GX3® -25 Inertial Sensor and an LMS1xx Lidar. The Husky is used in the lab’s Mobile Microgrids research.

 

 

 

The underwater fleet consists of two underwater gliders, ROUGHIE and GUPPIE. ROUGHIE, or Research-Oriented Underwater Glider for Hands-on Investigative Engineering, was developed by NASLab for near-shore missions. Read more about ROUGHIE here. GUPPIE, or Glider for Underwater Problem-solving and Promotion of Interest in Engineering, is a simplified version of ROUGHIE developed for education and is used in the Summer Youth Program‘s robotics classes every summer.

For aerial vehicles, NASLab has 3 Hexacopters. They are built on a Flame wheel 550 by DJI.  It uses a Pixhawk PX4 for the autopilot and a BeagleBone Black with a wifi adapter. Like the Husky, it can be used with the Qualysis motion sensor and camera system to conduct in-lab experiments. The hexacopters are currently part of the Persistent Autonomous Operation research.

 

Great Lakes Research Center

GLRC

The Great Lakes Research Center (GLRC) offers unique access to Lake Superior and the Keweenaw channel. GLRC facilities and faculty provide unparalleled opportunities to conduct lake research.