STARKVILLE — Tuesday morning, three robots took over the plaza in front of Mississippi State University’s Colvard Student Union.
These robots, piloted by faculty and students, were part of MSU’s kickoff event for Research Week, a week filled with demonstrations to highlight “research that matters” to the public and to undergraduate students thinking about pursuing research opportunities in the future.
“We’re trying to expose them to the opportunities,” said James Carskadon, research editor for the MSU Office of Public Affairs. “… Everything that we are doing is geared towards how we can make the world a better place, at the local level, state level, national level, and international level. There’s about $300 million in research activity every year at MSU.”
Md Mehedi Farhad, a PhD student working with MSU’s Information Processing and Sensing Lab, demonstrated the IMPRESS Bully robot to passing students. This robot, with a Boston Dynamics base that moves like a dog, tended to draw the most eyes. Farhad showed how he could make it walk, dance and bow to the crowd.
But even more impressive than the robot’s movements was its purpose. Farhad said IMPRESS Bully is designed to work alongside a NASA project to map soil moisture using satellite photos around the world.
“From the satellite, they map the moisture content of the soil around the world,” Farhad said. “But in a vegetation area, like a forest, they have some difficulties measuring the soil moisture because the signal is coming from the soil and the vegetation. … So we need to know the effect of the vegetation on the signal.”
Farhad explained how the sensors installed on top of the Boston Dynamics base robot could have a significant impact on the future of regions experiencing drought or forest fires.
“The application of this is forest fires,” Farhad said. “… If this thing can go into the forest, and give you an estimation of the water content in a forest, you can predict or stop a forest fire.”
Mohammed Ehsanul Hoque, a first-year PhD student, was piloting the IMPRESS Lab’s Husky, an all-terrain ground vehicle. This robot was equipped with onboard computing, a thermal camera, GPS and robot operating software for autonomy.
“In the real world, this can go to tunnels or caves where it’s dangerous for humans to go,” Hoque said. “It’s also good for agriculture, because it can estimate the height of crops. There are so many applications we’re still discovering.”
Though the Husky is smaller than the Bully robot, Hoque said its applications are limitless, as the robot can go where people cannot. It is also easy to pilot. Though Hoque only arrived at MSU in the spring of this year, he already can navigate it through crowds of students walking to and from the student union.
The largest robot of the day, the Clearpath Warthog, was being driven by Christopher Hudson, research engineer for the Center of Advanced Vehicular Systems. A larger version of the Husky robot, it is worth more than $200,000 and weighs about 700 pounds.
Despite the hulking presence of the robot, Hudson said a major goal of the Warthog is safety, as it has been equipped with thermal cameras, GPS and other sensors that make it ideal for working on a dairy farm.
“If you’re moving these cattle several times, over time can you see that a specific cow is limping?” Hudson said. “If you have thermal, how does that relate to the health of the cow? There is a lot of research that is going on in that area that applies to the sensors we put on these vehicles.”
Hudson said CAVS recently ran some tests on a dairy farm to see how the cows would react to the Warthog. Hudson said by the second day of herding, the cows had completely adjusted to the robot’s presence.
Hudson allowed MSU students, faculty and members of the public to pilot the Warthog temporarily, hoping to show how accessible robotics research can be at the university. He said by interacting with the robot safely, he hopes students will be excited about possibly continuing in graduate and PhD programs involving research.
“The amount of resources we have here exceeds a lot of what other universities have,” Hudson said. “We have access to a lot of robotics systems here that some universities don’t have, and if they do, they don’t let undergraduates touch them. … But I had 15 students out here driving it earlier.”
Along with the three robots, there were several other research demonstrations throughout the plaza, including projects from T.K. Martin Center for Technology and Disability, the MSU EcoCAR Team, the Raspet Flight Research Laboratory and more.
MSU is also hosting other events for Research Week. Today and Thursday, the public is invited to tour some select research facilities, including CAVS, the Athlete Engineering Lab and the High Performance Computing Collaboratory.
There will also be an undergraduate research symposium on Friday. For a full calendar of events, you can visit https://www.research.msstate.edu/initiatives/research-week.
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