U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Search Publications by:

Search Title, Abstract, Conference, Citation, Keyword or Author
Displaying 51 - 75 of 150

Traversability Metrics for Urban Search and Rescue Robots on Rough Terrain

January 31, 2007
Author(s)
V Molino, Rajmohan Madhavan, Elena R. Messina, Anthony J. Downs, Adam S. Jacoff, Stephen B. Balakirsky
Rough terrain, such as the rubble that we would expect to find in urban disaster areas, will likely impede robot mobility. The goal of this paper is to find methods for quantifying the difficulty a robot should encounter traversing a region of rough

DHS/NIST Response Robot Evaluation Exercises

January 8, 2007
Author(s)
Adam S. Jacoff, Elena R. Messina
The Department of Homeland Security, through the Science and Technology Directorate Standards Program, is developing performance standards for robots applied to urban search and rescue (US&R). The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is

Intelligent Unmanned Ground Vehicle Navigation via Information Evaluation

December 29, 2006
Author(s)
Rajmohan Madhavan, Elena R. Messina
Sensor-centric navigation of Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs) operating in rugged and expansive terrains requires the competency to evaluate the utility of sensor information such that it results in intelligent behavior of the vehicles. Highly imperfect

Performance Standards for Urban Search and Rescue Robots

August 1, 2006
Author(s)
Elena R. Messina
This article describes the motivation and approach for developing standard test methods for robots applied to urban search and rescue missions. The work is being carried out by Task Group E54.08.01, which is within the Operational Equipment subcommittee

Autonomy Levels for Unmanned Systems (ALFUS) Framework: An Update

June 28, 2006
Author(s)
Hui-Min Huang, K Pavek, James S. Albus, Elena R. Messina
The initial construct of the framework for the Autonomy Levels of Unmanned Systems (ALFUS) was presented in the 2004 SPIE3 Defense and Security Symposium. This paper describes the continuing development effort and further accomplishments made by the Ad Hoc

A Robot Ontology for Urban Search and Rescue

June 26, 2006
Author(s)
Craig I. Schlenoff, Elena R. Messina
The goal of this Robot Ontology effort is to develop and begin to populate a neutral knowledge representation (the data structures) capturing relevant information about robots and their capabilities to assist in the development, testing, and certification

Performance Standards for Urban Search and Rescue Robots

June 26, 2006
Author(s)
Elena R. Messina, Adam S. Jacoff
In this paper, we describe work in performance standards for urban search and rescue (USAR) robots begun in 2004 by the Department of Homeland Security. This program is being coordinated by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and will result

Using 4D/RCS to Address AI Knowledge Integration

June 26, 2006
Author(s)
Craig I. Schlenoff, James S. Albus, Elena R. Messina, Tony Barbera, Rajmohan (. Madhavan, Stephen B. Balakirsky
In this paper, we show how 4D/RCS incorporates and integrates multiple types of disparate knowledge representation techniques into a common, unifying architecture. 4D/RCS is based on the supposition that different knowledge representation techniques offer

Entity Knowledge Model Supporting Intelligent Systems

June 20, 2006
Author(s)
Hui-Min Huang, James S. Albus, Elena R. Messina, Harry A. Scott, Maris Juberts
Intelligent systems operate in uncertain and complex environments. In order to achieve their goals, these systems require rich and updated knowledge about the environment and about their own capabilities to enable proper decision making processes. A

Temporal Range Registration for Unmanned Ground and Aerial Vehicles

November 30, 2005
Author(s)
Rajmohan (. Madhavan, Tsai H. Hong, Elena R. Messina
An iterative temporal registration algorithm is presented in this article for registering 8 3D range images obtained from unmanned ground and aerial vehicles traversing unstructured 9 environments. We are primarily motivated by the development of 3D

Knowledge Representation and Decision Making for Mobile Robots

July 13, 2005
Author(s)
Elena R. Messina, Stephen B. Balakirsky
Knowledge is central to a mobile robot's ability to carry out its missions and adapt to changes in the environment it is traversing. The knowledge subsystem must support acquisition of information from external sources, maintain prior knowledge, infer new

A Framework For Autonomy Levels For Unmanned Systems (ALFUS)

June 30, 2005
Author(s)
Hui-Min Huang, K Pavek, B Novak, James S. Albus, Elena R. Messina
We describe the construct of the framework for the Autonomy Levels of Unmanned Systems (ALFUS), including the ongoing development effort undertaken by the Ad Hoc working group. We describe the elements of the ALFUS framework and the process that we

Hierarchical Control and Performance Evaluation of Multi-Vehicle Autonomous Systems

May 4, 2005
Author(s)
Stephen B. Balakirsky, Christopher J. Scrapper Jr, Elena R. Messina
This paper will describe how the Mobility Open Architecture Tools and Simulation (MOAST) framework can facilitate performance evaluations of RCS compliant multi-vehicle autonomous systems. This framework provides an environment that allows for simulated

Mobility Open Architecture Simulation and Tools Environment

April 21, 2005
Author(s)
Stephen B. Balakirsky, Christopher J. Scrapper Jr, Elena R. Messina
This paper will describe the Mobility Open Architecture Tools and Simulation (MOAST) environment. This environment conforms to the NIST 4D/RCS architecture [3] and allows simulated and real architectural components to function seamlessly in the same system

Autonomy Levels for Unmanned Systems (ALFUS) Framework: An Update

April 4, 2005
Author(s)
Hui-Min Huang, K Pavek, James S. Albus, Elena R. Messina
The initial construct of the framework for the Autonomy Levels of Unmanned Systems (ALFUS) was presented in the 2004 SPIE Defense and Security Symposium. This paper describes the continuing development effort and further accomplishments made by the Ad Hoc