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Research Facilities Acoustic Anechoic Chamber Facility |
Research Facilities Acoustic Anechoic Chamber Facility This facility is a vibration-isolated, shell-within-shell structure that is one of the quietest and best acoustically characterized rooms in the world. The inner room is supported by 52 coil springs and has walls 0.3 meter thick. All interior surfaces are covered with custom-designed wedges that protrude into the room about 1.8 meters. The inner room is 6.7 meters wide, 10 meters long (wedge tip to wedge tip), and 6.7 meters high. The walls are designed to be 99.9 percent sound-absorptive for frequencies above 45 hertz. The ambient noise in the chamber is so low it cannot be measured above a few hundred hertz with the best quality laboratory microphones. Applications: Contact: Victor Nedzelnitsky Dedicated to mass research and development, this facility consists of a class 1,000 clean room with temperature control to within 0.1 degree Celsius in the range of 20 degrees Celsius to 22 degrees Celsius, temperature gradients of less than 0.1 degree Celsius per meter, and relative humidity control to within ± 2 percent in the range of 45 percent to 50 percent. With this and other environmentally controlled laboratories, NIST provides mass measurements in the range 1 milligram to 27,200 kilograms. Applications: Contact: Zeina
Jabbour Robotic Performance Test Arena The test arena is a reproducible means of assessing various aspects of robot performance. Measuring 20 meters on each side, the test arena consists of three separate areas with increasing degrees of verisimilitude and difficulty. Sensing, navigation, and mapping challenges found in real search-and-rescue situations have been abstracted in the test arena. Abstractions of human victims can be placed throughout, represented by a variety of signatures, such as acoustic (calling out, moaning, knocking on walls), thermal (represented by heating pads), visual (mannequins, clothing), and motion. This test arena made its debut at the world's first competition for search-and-rescue robots, held as part of AAAI 2000, the annual conference of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence. It has been used in subsequent competitions, and it is available for use by individual researchers and government programs. The Robocup Rescue international competition is creating duplicate arenas to disseminate the test course at the various locations where the competition is held. Applications:
Contact: Adam
Jacoff or Elena
Messina
Date
created:
April 24, 2002 |