Jackal is a small, fast, entry-level field robotics research platform. It has an onboard computer, GPS, and IMU fully integrated with ROS for out-of-the-box autonomous capability.
Our Jackal UGV is equipped with 3D Lidar, depth camera, IMU, NVIDIA Jetson Nano Developer Kit, etc.
As a member of the Intel Neuromorphic Research Community (INRC), our group has full access to the computational resources, specifically to the most powerful neuromorphic server named Loihi-2, which deployed in fall 2021. Also, we have Kapoho Bay Loihi chips (left figure) with a USB interface that has 262 K neurons for our intelligent robot and the neuromorphic Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) systems.
Our group has 1123 square feet of in-door lab space for robotics research. This space is used to test the tasks, such as navigation, SLAM, online learning, multiple robotics communication, decision-making, etc.
Our lab has multiple robot arms available for educational and research purposes. With different accessories, such as a suction cup, pneumatic gripper, and writing kits, the robotic arms can conduct multiple tasks, such as 3D printing, laser engraving, drawing, etc. The robotic arm supports secondary development in 13 interfaces and 20 programming languages/methods, such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, ROS, Python, PLC, Arduino, etc.
Our group also has GPU-based deep learning computational platforms for students as listed below:
2 of NVIDIA TITAN RTX 24GB GDDR6
5 of Intel Xeon Silver 24 Threads, 2.2 GHz 16.5 MB Cache, 85W, 4214 Processor, 12 cores
20 of NVIDIA Tesla V100 32GB CoWoS HBM2 PCIe 3.0
Parts of computational resources are supported by the Institution of Computing and Cybersystems (ICC) Group. The Institute of Computing and Cybersystems (ICC) is composed of six centers that promote research and learning experiences in the areas of cyber-physical systems, cybersecurity, data sciences, human-centered computing, and scalable architectures and systems for the benefit of Michigan Tech and society at large. The ICC has close to 60 faculty members and it provides research support through seed grants, travel awards, student funding, support personnel, lab infrastructure, etc. Laboratory infrastructure of note includes the Data Sciences Laboratory, the Immersive Visualization Studio, and Systems Control Lab. The ICC also provides a full-time research support staff for member faculty.
Prof. An is a faculty member of the Centers for Cyber-Physical Systems, Human-Centered Computing, and Scalable Architectures and Systems
More details can be found at https://www.mtu.edu/icc/centers/