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ASI’s exhibit at one of the largest unmanned vehicle conferences in the world attracted robotics enthusiasts from multiple industries to see the latest in vehicle automation technology.
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Business development personnel from Autonomous Solutions, Inc. returned this past week from a sunny Orlando, Florida, where AUVSI recently concluded its Unmanned Systems 2014 conference. The booth at this year’s AUVSI proved to be one of ASI’s most impactful exhibits to date and included a wide variety of videos, new products, vehicles, and even a concept command center.

Vehicle Control Unit

ASI’s booth highlighted the launch of a new vehicle control unit (VCU). The VCU is the onboard computer in an autonomous vehicle that manages critical vehicle functions like positioning, transmission, acceleration, brake, and steering, while also relaying vehicle health data to the remote operator.
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The new design has improvements in size, weight, and computing power over previous models and now houses the software pieces that control autonomy and obstacle avoidance. The new VCU design will soon be adopted into ASI’s vehicle automation offerings across all industries.

Forge

Released during last year’s AUVSI conference, the Forge robotic platform was back again, this time with a massive gripper attachment capable of retrieving and manipulating barrels, trees, and other large objects.
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Since its unveiling last year, Forge was recognized by the Robotics Business Review with their Game Changer Award and has received heavy interest from the agriculture industry, especially orchards, vineyards, and other specialty crops. Forge’s narrow build allows it to fit easily between orchard and vineyard rows and perform various robotic tasks such as mowing and spraying.

Command Station

In reaction to requests for a self-contained command station, ASI brought a design concept to AUVSI 2014.
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Affectionately dubbed the “Rocket Chair,” the exhibit showed attendees what a command station might look like for the simultaneous operation of multiple robotic vehicles. The command station exhibit quickly became a hit as many attendees stopped to take pictures and consider how the solution might apply to their industry.

RoboTour

One of the highlights of Unmanned Systems 2014 was ASI’s participation in RoboTour. As a way to help support STEM education, groups of local students attended several of the booths in the exhibit hall.
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Students ranged from 5-12 grade and learned about real life applications of technology and engineering. More than fifty RoboTour student and teachers visited ASI’s booth.

“We thoroughly enjoyed it,” said Dru Brown, Marketing Manager at ASI. “Some of the students already participate in VEX [Robotics Competitions], so they got pretty excited about the things we brought. This was a great opportunity to help encourage the next generation of robotics engineers, and I hope we had a positive impact on them.”
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Mel shows RoboTour students ASI's command station conceptMel Torrie, CEO of Autonomous Solutions, Inc. shows the capabilities of ASI’s command station to RoboTour.

ASI looks forward to AUVSI Unmanned Systems 2015 scheduled for May 4-7 in Atlanta, Georgia.
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