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From the front lines of war zones to classrooms, Maryland robotics companies are pushing the technological envelope to protect soldiers and help children with possible learning disabilities.
Anthrotronix has a hand — literally — in both endeavors, with creations such as the AcceleGlove and the CosmoBot. The Silver Spring company got its start in 1999 when it received a grant from the U.S. Department of Education to develop interfaces for children to access technology.
And on the academic front, students at the University of Maryland, College Park, and Johns Hopkins University are studying robotic systems for research and commercial applications.
Russell H. Taylor, director of Johns Hopkins' Engineering Research Center for Computer-Integrated Surgical Systems and Technology, said he sees robotics being used for increasingly sophisticated applications, such as partnering with people to perform tasks more "safely, accurately, reliably and economically."
"The technology to enable these applications is driven by need and as the technology develops, it will enable new applications which will create new needs," Taylor said.
Helping children first
CEO Corinna E. Lathan co-founded privately held Anthrotronix with Jack Maxwell Vice in 1999. Vice's service in the Marines Corps brings a warfighter's perspective to the company, according to program director Charlotte Safos, and he is in charge of the research and development Anthrotronix performs for various military agencies, while Lathan brings knowledge of education, rehabilitation and therapy, Safos added.
In addition to its federal education grant, Anthrotronix started with a grant from the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The grant was to help Anthrotronix develop interfaces for soldiers to control robots, Lathan said.
Those two grants sparked Anthrotronix's growth, and in 2005 it created a subsidiary, AT Kidsystems, which creates products from Anthrotronix research and development. The main product of AT Kidsystems is Cosmo's Learning Systems, an interactive learning system for children that is commercially available.
"We have a lot of fun while doing some good stuff," Safos said.
The company has Small Business Innovation Research grants from several government agencies, including the Department of Education and the National Institutes of Health.
"[The government] likes to see companies who are getting SBIR funds commercialize technology — basically get the technology into the hands of the end user," Safos said.
Anthrotronix has also commercialized the AcceleGlove, a gesture-capturing glove designed for control, communication and tracking that can be applied for a variety of uses, including the military, gaming, medical purposes and research and development.
Lathan expressed excitement at AcceleGlove's application for medical rehabilitation for hand assessment and function, as well as the glove's potential for robotic surgery.
Anthrotronix has also been working with the Defense Department to apply AcceleGlove for robot control for explosive ordnance disposal, according to Lathan.
Anthrotronix has also won a $1.9 million contract from the Army Research Labs that ran from 2003 through 2008 to develop advanced interfaces for human-to-robot controllers and interaction, said Carl Pompei, executive vice president and CFO of Anthrotronix.
The company, which declined to disclose its revenues, also received an ongoing contract from NASA for $700,000 to identify problems with three-dimensional perception in astronauts, plus a contract in 2007 from NIH for $817,000, according to Pompei.
Battlefield scouting:
Let the robot do it
Identifying obstacles is how General Dynamics in Westminster helps soldiers on the battlefield.
General Dynamics Robotics Systems, a subsidiary of General Dynamics Land Systems of Michigan, provides research and development for autonomous navigation, specifically developing sensors for a boat, ship or vehicle that would allow it to drive itself on sea or land, said Peter Keating, vice president of communications for the robotics subsidiary.
The sensors allow the vehicle to identify obstacles such as ditches and navigate around them, Keating said. Sensors are also put on vehicles similar to golf carts that are driven to ammunition bunkers to see if they have been broken into.
The company also has vehicles that provide scouting for combat missions by finding the best route of travel while avoiding hilltops. The information on a safe route is sent digitally for other vehicles to follow, Keating said.
"It takes men out of the convoy so one or two vehicles are autonomously driven," he said.
Like Anthrotronix, General Dynamics has worked on projects for the Army and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Among them is a $23 million Army program developing technology for autonomous mobility cross-country navigation.
General Dynamics has also worked on an eight-year, $64 million program supported by the Army Research Laboratory to develop and test fundamental technology required to develop capable, near-autonomous unmanned systems.
The company reported a profit of $2.6 billion last year on sales of $29.3 billion.
Collaborating on robotics
The medical robotics research at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore has led to work with several companies interested in varied applications.
Taylor, who has been at Johns Hopkins for 14 years, said Intuitive Surgical in California and other startups are among the companies the school collaborates with on medical robotics research.
A large portion of the medical robotics research at Johns Hopkins is providing assistance with surgery, including placing a needle on a target inside the body with guidance from images.
"A robot can be a highly versatile surgical tool that can extend a surgeon's capabilities," Taylor said. "It can be made very small to go into places a surgeon cannot and can operate with X-rays without worrying about overexposure."
The university is also developing a plastic robot that can enter an MRI machine and place biopsy needles in a patient's prostate, according to Taylor.
Another Johns Hopkins robot is being developed to conduct radiation therapy for small animals for cancer research, he said.
At the University of Maryland, a recent demonstration at the Clark School of Engineering involved maple seeds or samara fruit, with research on the spiraling pattern in which they glide to the ground. Aerospace engineering graduate students at Clark have learned how to apply the seeds' unique design to devices that can hover and perform surveillance in defense and emergency situations.
And a team of Clark faculty this fall won a three-year, $1.5 million National Science Foundation grant for developing microrobots, which could be used for applications such as search and rescue during disaster relief efforts, manufacturing, warehouse management, ecological monitoring, intelligence and surveillance, infrastructure and equipment monitoring, metrology and medical applications, such as cell manipulation and microfactories, according to university information.
Helping the present,
looking to the future
The technology developed by Anthrotronix has many applications and can be used to solve many different problems, according to Dean Chang, director of the ventures program for the Maryland Technology Enterprise Institute at the University of Maryland.
The Focus Foundation of Davidsonville partnered with the CosmoBot, part of Anthrotronix's Cosmo's Learning Systems, to perform a study on the interaction between robots and children with autism, said science director Carole Samango-Sprouse.
The study found that the children were more engaged and could perform more challenging tasks when interacting with the robots, according to Sprouse.
"It was easy for the kids because the robot's operations are predictable," Sprouse said. "It makes it less threatening and more approachable."
The robot's involvement led children to try tasks they had avoided because they were too challenging, she said. Sprouse noted that the robot would set up a task and two children would take part in it, strictly because of the robot.
Some of the fundamental pieces of technology to perform functions seen in movies such as "Minority Report" and "Iron Man" can be found at Anthrotronix, according to Chang.
The pieces can also be applied immediately for a technology platform for the future while also having a current impact on fields such as video games, he said.
"Anthrotronix goes beyond what is considered state-of-the-art in video games," he said, adding that the Nintendo Wii system "validates" what the company is working on to be more accepted.
"If not for the Wii, people would still be playing video games on a two-thumb controller," Chang said.
Correction: The photo information on this story originally incorrectly identified its subject. She is Corinna E. Lathan, CEO of Anthrotronix.
