TRESTLE: Autonomous Assembly by Teams of Coordinated Robots
This Project is no longer active.
Autonomous assembly of large structures will require teams of robots. Much like any human work crew, heterogeneous capabilities will also be necessary. The TRESTLE project is developing the architectural framework necessary to coordinate robots performing complex assembly projects. In specific, the project seeks to develop architectural tools used to coordinate actions performed by multiple robots. These tools form the core of an executive layer that orchestrates and monitors tasks across robots to perform assembly tasks. Since the number of possible failure modes over many robots working on long sequences of actions is high, TRESTLE incorporates the ability of humans to cooperatively manage tasks. By employing Sliding Autonomy, we allow the operator to manage the assembly in three different ways. First, a portion of the system’s tasks can be predefined to be under operator control. Second, the operator can intervene and manually switch the system to operator control. Third, the system can automatically shift to operator control after a failure.
TRESTLE will examine tasks such as:
- Truss Assembly: Truss assembly includes retrieving materials from stockpiles, moving materials to the worksite, coordinating assembly with other agents, and mating compliant structures without causing collisions between agents and the infrastructure.
- Bracing: Cable bracing under tension can often add strength and rigidity to truss structures. Bracing along the diagonals of a cube, for example, can greatly increase its strength with minimal increase in weight.
- Wiring: Many structures need to be wired after assembly. Though wiring need not be tensioned, as in the case of bracing, but may have complex connectors or irregular waypoints.
current head
current contact
past staff
- Tarun Nimmagadda
- Raymond Ka-man Sheh