Facilities


UMan

This platform was sponsored by NSF under the CRI: Experimental Platform for Robot Programming and Task Execution in Human Environments grant, award number CSE CNS 0454074 in the CRI program. We gratefully acknowledge this support.


Amigobots

The laboratory utilizes five AmigoBots for educational purposes as part of the undergraduate robotics classes. Past projects have involved localization tasks, shortest-path calculation and path execution, as well as numerous competitions in which the Amigobots are placed randomly in a series of mazes where they must intelligently maneuver around obstacles and other Amigobots in an attempt to find and secure prizes.

Amigobot Specifications, for each robot:
  • differential-drive
  • 8 rangefinding sonar sensors
  • twin 500-tick motor encoders
  • dual serial ports
  • AmigoBot Serial Ethernet
  • 1Mb onboard RAM
  • 2 drive wheels, motors and rear caster
  • MobileEyes and Mapper Basic Software


Lasers - SICK Laser Management System (LMS) 200

We utilize the SICK LMS 200 with realtime data transfer as part of our research in planning and navigation. Currently, the laser is installed on the UMan platform (see our projects page). The SICK range finder is an integral part of the robot's navigation system.

SICK LMS 200 Specifications
  • 150m maximum range
  • 10mm resolution with
    • +/- 15mm statistical error in the 1-8m range
    • +/- 4cm statistical error in the 8-20m range
  • 0.25°/0.5°/1° angular resolution for 100° scan
  • 0.5°/1° angular resolution for 180° scan


Computer Cluster

Our laboratory, which overlaps with the Computational Biology Laboratory, maintains a 176-core computer cluster for computational biology. The cluster is used for large-scale computations such as protein modeling and quantitative genetics. The majority of the hosts run two, dual core 2.4Ghz Xeon processors with 8G of shared RAM. The configuration provides excellent support for multi-processor shared memory programs such as BLAST. It also supports MPI for larger parallel-processing programs. Job management is handled by Sun's Grid Engine using the "share tree" mechanism to balance fractional usage over time.

This cluster was sponsored by NSF under the CRI: Computational Biology Facility for Western Massachusetts grant, award number CSE CNS 0551500 in the CRI program. We gratefully acknowledge this support.

For additional information on the Compute Cluster, please see this page.


Haptics - Protein Motion and Docking Research

We utilize a Sensable Omni haptic device to help render forces and to interactively manipulate our protein model. Haptic interaction with our protein kinematic protein model allows us to apply forces in arbitrary directions and to get a better intuition of the interplay of inter and intra-molecular forces.

Specifications for the Sensable Omni:
  • IEEE-1394 FireWire® port
  • 3 Degrees of freedom "out"
  • 6 Degrees of freedom "in"
  • 3.3 Newtons of maximum exertable force
  • 0.055 mm position resolution
  • Force feedback workspace dimensions of 160 W x 120 H x 70 D mm