The Autonomous Systems Laboratory is part of the Mechanical Engineering Department of the College of Engineering at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Located in Honolulu's beautiful Manoa Valley just minutes from downtown Honolulu and the beaches of Waikiki, the University of Hawaii at Manoa (UHM) is the major campus of the state's ten-campus university system. The U.S. News & World Report college rankings for 1998 included the University of Hawaii (UH) among the "top 25 Public Universities" in the United States. Only 11 other universities share UH's "triple crown" status of being Land Grant, Sea Grant and Space Grant institutions. There are approximately 47,000 students including about 4,700 graduate students. UHM is one of 59 public universities classified by the Carnegie Foundation as a Research I university, meaning it receives at least $40 million in federal support and awards 50 or more doctoral degrees per year. UHM has one of the country's top 5 marine science programs as ranked by the National Academy of Sciences in 1996. The College of Engineering is one of 68 university programs visited by Boeing recruiters and one of only 14 designated a "high interest" school by California-based TRW, a space high technology firm.

In the Autonomous Systems Laboratory about 10 researchers of faculty, post doctoral fellows, engineers, graduate students, and undergraduate students are engaged in the development of advanced technologies to improve performance of robotics and automation in an effort to replace human operators with intelligent machines in hostile working environments such as the deep ocean and space. ASL has over $1 million annual research funding.

ASL consists of two locations: Design and Analysis in Holmes 140, and Fabrication and vehicle management at UH Marine Center (Snug Harbor) where UH research vessels are docked. ASL is equipped with world class high technology facilities in hardware and software. Major units include a 7 degrees-of-freedom (dof) electric-driven underwater robotic manipulator, two remotely operated underwater vehicle (Super C'Cat), a test-bed autonomous underwater vehicle (Omni-Directional Intelligent Navigator - ODIN), Magellan pro mobile robots, MATLAB/SIMULINK, VxWorks Real-time control OS, Wavefront Visualizers, Stereographics Virtual Reality (VR) systems, lasers, CCD cameras, two image scan sonars, DIDSON precise sonar, inertia motion units (IMU), and various up-to-date computing systems. Research activities at ASL are greatly enhanced by facilities such as the NOAA Hawaii Undersea Research Laboratory, Pacific Mapping Center, Pacific Missile Range Facility, and Maui High Performance Computing Center.

Last updated August 17, 2006