Projects

Outreach

DIRECT lab also focuses on outreach and providing opportunities for underserved communities to participate in research. The most successful program has been through collaboration with several local High Schools to allow Latinx students a chance to conduct summer research. Additionally, this lab actively participates in many other regular outreach events including public monthly robotics nights.

School Visits

Elementary and Middle School visits, career presentations, and hands-on robot demonstrations.Elementary and Middle School visits, career presentations, and hands-on robot demonstrations.

High School Outreach

College preparation and key skills discussions. In-depth details of necessary technical and soft skills to join the robotics field. College preparation and key skills discussions. In-depth details of necessary technical and soft skills to join the robotics field.

Projects

Activity Intelligence

The Activity Intelligence project develops tools for maritime situational awareness using Automatic Identification System (AIS) data. Research includes generating realistic simulated AIS datasets for training AI models and applying machine learning and large language models to improve the interpretation of vessel activity and maritime behavior.

Neuromorphic

The Neuromorphic project explores low-power vision systems for robotic perception and environmental awareness. Research focuses on using event based cameras and efficient algorithms to identify objects of interest and improve autonomous robot sensing in real world environments.

ITASat

The ITASAT project supports the ITASAT-2 satellite mission through collaboration with NASA, ITA, Brazilian partners, and the Centre for Space Engineering. Efforts focus on improving maritime domain awareness within Brazil’s EEZ through ship detection algorithms and the deployment of AI and machine learning on edge computing platforms.

Swarm environmental imaging

The swarm environmental imaging project investigates multi-robot collaboration and semantic reasoning to improve environmental understanding. By combining observations from multiple robots, the system can better identify likely locations of objects or events Potential applications include search and rescue, security, and robotic swarm technology.

Electric Transport

The Electric Transport project develops intelligent systems for electric vehicle infrastructure and management. Research includes forecasting EV adoption and charging demand, developing charger management software, and improving route planning, and range prediction.

Curriculum Development

The Curriculum Development project creates course materials for classes taught at multiple universities. This includes developing lectures, assignments, labs, and assessments in areas such as robotics, machine learning, transformers, and energy systems.

Robots

GO

GO is a quadrupedal robotic platform used for research in autonomous navigation, environmental understanding, and operation across diverse terrain.

Rosbot

Rosbot is a wheeled robotic platform used for swarm robotics and multi-agent autonomy research, supporting studies in collaborative sensing and coordination.

Submarine

The submarine platform is an autonomous underwater vehicle used for research in underwater navigation, mapping, and LiDAR-based environmental sensing.