ByHaldun
Robot Procurement Tests for $37 million in Purchases
Robolit assisted in the administration of two large procurement testing events. Several robots came to NIST HQ, Gaithersburg to run through over 30 standard or developmental tests and have data recorded based on their performance. The data collected from these events was used to make a decision worth millions of dollars in purchases.
The first procurement was done for the Air Force and was worth $25 million. This event was held on various weeks within May, June and July where it featured small response robots such as the MTGR, Dragon Runner DR10, Firstlook 110, and the Packbot 310. The Air Force considered the data collected on each of these robots and decided to purchases several units of the MTGR. Utilizing the data collected on those four robots with the addition of data collected on the Caliber mini from ICOR another $2 million purchase was made. The winner of this procurement is not yet public news and cannot be revealed at this time.
The second procurement was for the Metrotech Bomb squads and featured four robots within the middle and heavy weight classes. This procurement was for $10 million. The robots that were tested were the Caliber T5, MK4, Telemax, and the Andros FX. The data was only recently collected and has not been submitted to the Bomb Squad yet.
In summary Robolit administered and prepared robot testing for $37 million in purchases.
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Dr. Komsuoglu is a robotics expert and entrepreneur with over 20 years of research, development and start-up experience. Focusing on biologically inspired high-performance mobility and high-dexterity manipulation systems Mr. Komsuoglu served as a key personnel in several critically acclaimed multi-institutional robotics projects sponsored by Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), United States Army Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center (TARDEC) and National Science Foundation (NSF). Some noteworthy projects he was involved with includes DARPA-CBS, DARPA-RHex, DARPA-RiSE, NSF-FIBR and MA-UGV. In these projects Dr. Komsuoglu engaged experimental robotic research, simulation, embedded system development (hardware/software), control systems engineering and analytic studies. Since 2006 Dr. Komsuoglu has been heavily engaged in business development. He founded and ran technology start-up companies focusing on commercialization of several robotic technologies he helped develop. In 2009 he founded Robolit LLC (https://www.robolit.com) providing design consulting for academic research equipment, search and rescue systems for first responders and military applications. His current work focuses on remotely controlled UAVs with a unique UI system employing virtual reality devices with applications in first response and entertainment industry. Since 2011 Dr. Komsuoglu has been serving as an active member of the DHS-NIST-ASTM Standard Robot Test Methods committee and is responsible of development of manipulation test methods.
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