Facilities

Physical Space

The ARCS Lab extends both on main campus and at UCR’s College of Engineering Center for Environmental Research and Technology (CE-CERT).  On main campus, the lab is housed in an approximately 1,200 sq. ft. of shared space with dedicated desks for six students and an open area for experiments.  The ARCS Lab also extends to an approximately 1,000 sq. ft. lab space dedicated to experimentation and robot rapid prototyping.  This facility is housed at CE-CERT, just a few minutes away from main campus.  Both labs on main campus and at CE-CERT are equipped with motion capture to offer accurate localization and ground truth data for testing and validation prior to deployment in outdoor settings.  The facility on main campus is instrumented with a 16ft L. x 12ft W. x 7ft H. indoor 10-camera VICON motion capture system.  The facility at CE-CERT includes a 23ft L. x 29ft W. x 10ft H. indoor 12-camera VICON motion capture system.

Rapid Prototyping Equipment

ARCS Lab's "Manufacturing Corner" currently features the following rapid prototyping capabilities/equipment:

• Metal & Carbon-fiber Machining: Stepcraft D.600 CNC router (with enclosure and milling bath)

• Metal & Carbon-fiber Cutting: Wazer Water Jet Cutter

• Laser Cutting: Universal VLS3.60 laser cutter (with attached BOFA air filtration unit)

• 3D Printing: 1) Markforged Mark 2 carbon fiber 3D printer; 2) Bambu Labs X1-Carbon 3D printer; 3) MakerBot Replicator+ PLA 3D printer; 4) Ender 3 multi-material 3D printer; 5) dual-nozzle Prusa i3 multi-material 3D printer; and 6) Formlabs Form 3 SLA 3D printer

• PCB Prototyping: Voltera V-one PCB printer with drilling tool

• Polymer Casting: Assortment of vacuum pumps and degassing chambers of different sizes

• Electrical Testing / Signal Generator / Power Supply: Assortment of B&K Precision products, including two power supplies from other vendors

• Electrical / Mechanical Prototyping: Assortment of tools and supplies required for prototyping and repairs

This equipment is used to construct a multitude of robotic prototypes like impact-resilient aerial and ground robots, mid-sized quadrupeds, foldable ultra-lightweight legged robots, soft robots, hybrid 3D-printed and laser-cut educational robots, various automation devices, as well as a number of support structures required for development and testing at very fast rates.

Robots

Beyond in-house built robots, the ARCS lab features several commercially-available robots.  Currently, these include:

• 1 Spot quadrupedal robot with integrated arm (Boston Dynamics)

• 1 Matrice 100 Quadrotor UAV (DJI)

• 1 Matrice 350 Quadrotor UAV (DJI)

• 5 Tello Quadrotor UAVs (DJI)

• 1 Aero RTF Quadrotor UAV (Intel)

• 1 Husky wheeled robot (Clearpath Robotics)

• 1 Jackal wheeled robot (Clearpath Robotics)

• 1 ROSbot2.0-Pro wheeled robot (Husarion)

• 1 Jaco-2 robot arm (Kinova)

• 1 Gen3 lite robot arm (Kinova)

Shared Resources

Besides these resources, the ARCS lab has access to new shared instrumentation housed within the College's Center for Robotics and Intelligent Systems (CRIS).  The physical space in CRIS contains a 26ft L. x 26ft W. x 7ft H. indoor 8-camera Optitrack motion capture system.  It also contains a range of diverse robots:

• 2 Widow X 250 Robot Arms (Robotis)

• 1 Gen3 lite robot arm (Kinova)

• 1 NAO humanoid robot (SoftBank Robotics)

• 2 ROSbot2.0-Pro wheeled robots (Husarion)

• 4 Turtlebot 3 Burger wheeled robots (Robotis)

• 4 Turtlebot 3 Waffle PI wheeled robots (Robotis)

• 4 Crazyflie2.1 aerial robots (BitCraze)

• 2 outdoor aerial robots (custom-made by our group based on parts from Holybro)