Houston-based TRACLabs, vendors of robotics and automation, were recently awarded an $850,000 software development grant from the U.S. Department of Defense's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

The company's proposal, "Building a Coherent World View from Sensory Data," focuses on "creating software that can integrate data from a wide variety of video, infrared, range and other sources to improve the performance of robotic search and recovery," with the goal of saving more soldiers' lives, according to TRACLabs officials.

"Imagine a situation where a unit wants to see if chemical or radioactive weapons have been deployed in a building before they enter," says David Kortekamp, president and CEO of TRACLabs. "Our software will enable a robot to quickly and accurately assess the situation without putting troops at risk of exposure."

Robots and unmanned air and ground vehicles form an increasingly large segment of the U.S. military's surveillance and security assets. Currently, there are as many as 4,000 robots and unmanned air and ground vehicles deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

One problem arising from all this, of course, is how to integrate the information from each to form a comprehensive picture of what is happening on the ground. TRACLabs officials say they'll develop software that "merges that data into a single stream," and improve robotic recognition of static objects, such as bomb components, and "help robots better manipulate their environments."

This will include tasks as diverse as opening doors and drawers to determining a search pattern that will ensure that every square inch of territory has been investigated. In the second stage, the focus will shift to searching for objects that are able to move, from mobile weapon units to human targets.

A couple months ago TMC had the news that Raytheon (News - Alert) was awarded a contract by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to provide a military wireless network interoperable gateway. The contract provides Raytheon $24.4 million for one year. Options would extend the contract to 2012 and bring the potential value to $155 million.