Modular Advanced Networked Telerobotic Interface System (MANTIS)

With the goal to reduce astronaut time required to maintain experiments on the ISS and aid advances in vision processing and robotic arm control technology, TUI proposes to collaborate with NanoRacks to develop a "Modular Advanced Networked Telerobotic Interface System" (MANTIS) that will integrate an existing robotic arm in a NanoLabs payload on the ISS. The MANTIS system will reducing crew member burden for performing NanoLab experiments by enabling automated and/or supervised teleoperated operation of the Plate Reader, MixStix, and other systems in the NanoRacks instruments. The MANTIS development effort will leverage an existing KRAKEN robotic arm, integrate existing hardware and develop open source software to perform experiments on the NanoRacks platform. To aid design and integration in a Model Based Design (MBD) framework this SBIR will also develop an open simulation framework and tools, leveraging the Robot Operating System (ROS) environment. MANTIS will also enable advances in vision processing and arm control algorithms for the ISS by giving researchers an open software framework to develop on MANTIS. The Phase I effort will develop a detailed design for MANTIS. The Phase II effort will build MANTIS and mature it to TRL-6 through integrated testing with the KRAKEN arm and NanoRacks hardware aboard the ISS. NanoRacks has agreed to collaborate with us in these efforts to enable integration of MANTIS with their experiment platform, and will be our transition partner for Phase III commercialization.

MANTIS has the potential to give NASA development and integration tools, open software, and hardware onboard the ISS to commercialize the use of the MANTIS platform for organizations to develop software for supervised telerobotic operation of experiments onboard the ISS.

The MANTIS platform will give individuals wishing to perform experiments with supervised telerobotic operation on the ISS a pathway to do so through development and integration tools, open software, and accessible hardware. This framework can be leveraged by commercial entities like NanoRacks to increase the number and efficiency of experiments onboard the ISS. This is evidenced by NanoRacks in-kind contributions to the proposed effort.

This is early/mid-stage (TRL 3) — the most realistic path in is NASA SBIR/STTR, which funds small businesses and research institutions to develop technology aligned with NASA's needs (equity-free, phased funding). Check whether a current SBIR/STTR solicitation topic overlaps with this project's technology area, or contact the project directly (above) to ask.

None of these are guaranteed paths for this specific project — TechPort itself doesn't have an "apply" button. Reaching out to the contact(s) above with a specific question is usually the fastest way to find out what's actually open.