NASA\u2019s \u201cignition over pressure sound suppression\u201d <\/a>– IOP-SS – system, which is designed to protect Artemis 3 from sound vibrations during launch.<\/p>\n\u201cThese pipes were definitely small enough and long enough that a small person could fit,\u201d Wagstaff said. \u201cThey were able to send our drone in instead of a person and it\u2019s just a lot safer that way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wagstaff said his only concern was that the Wombat is not yet waterproof, but the pipes were drained and NASA was able to have a successful mission with the drone crawler and its oversized wheels.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were able to make some decisions based on the imagery that they collected for the Artemis 3 program,\u201d Wagstaff said. \u201cSo that was really cool.\u201d<\/p>\n
Where No Man Wants To Go<\/p>\n
The idea of the Wombat came from a home inspector who asked why there were no drones or robots he could send into crawl spaces instead of himself.<\/p>\n
\u201cA group of us were doing computer engineering at the University of Wyoming, and Christian Bitzas\u2019 dad pitched the idea to us,\u201d Wagstaff said. \u201cWe were like, ‘We probably could build those, and we ended up winning a competition.’\u201d<\/p>\n
That was the launch of Uplinkrobotics four years ago. Since then, Wagstaff\u2019s three co-founders have gone on to other projects and jobs. Wagstaff said he stayed on because of the potential he sees in their rock crawler drone that can literally go anywhere.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou would be surprised but there are not a lot of people making ground-based robots,\u201d Wagstaff said. \u201cThere is quite a bit of push to build drones with legs right now that look like dogs or the ones that look like humans \u2013 but not for the wheeled versions.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Wombat is specifically designed to go down into crawlspaces and take live videos and photographs. Wagastaff said it is common for pictures to be sent back from their wheeled drone of skunks, snakes and leaking sewage.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is all kinds of nasty stuff under a house that people have to crawl into,\u201d Wagstaff said. \u201cThey have to suit up and wear a mask just to protect themselves from mold and hantavirus. And they’ll be doing these inspections four or five times a day.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wagstaff said that not only does it save on the house inspectors time, it also saves their knees.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’ve been under homes testing our crawler and it sucks, especially in small spaces where you can barely fit,\u201d Wagstaff said. \u201cIt hurts even if you wear knee pads and you will be struggling to walk by the time you are 60 if you do that daily.\u201d<\/p>\n
Keeping It Simple<\/p>\n
When designing the Wombat, which retails for just over $4,000, Wagstaff said they kept it simple. The four entrepreneurs stuck to a wheeled version that can handle the uneven terrain under most homes much better than even the high-end $70,000 walking robots.<\/p>\n
The four large under-deflated wheels are designed to at least have one wheel always touching the ground, so it rarely gets stuck. The camera is mounted in the front rather than the top so the drone can flip over and it won’t get damaged.<\/p>\n
\u201cSpaces are very nasty environments,\u201d Wagstaff said. \u201cIt’s very hard on electronics and there\u2019s no flat ground.\u201d<\/p>\n
Their buyers, Wagstaff explained, are mostly blue-collar workers from 25 to 60 years old who are inspecting homes. They don\u2019t want a complicated machine that takes 20 minutes to set up and two weeks to learn.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey want something they can hand to their apprentice that can be figured out in a matter of seconds and takes five seconds to deploy,\u201d Wagstaff said. \u201cSo, we concentrate on reliability, durability and simplicity.\u201d<\/p>\n
The drone is operated with a simple control by the house inspector and the footage can be saved to an SD card.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe came up with the motto of \u201ceasy to use and hard to lose,\u201d Wagstaff said. \u201cWe can hand this to a 5-year-old and they can drive it or hand it to your grandma and she can drive it.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Wagstaff and his team continue to build their home inspection niche with a new unit, the Muskrat, designed for inspecting culverts, they are also continuing to get requests from other business sectors.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe’ve got some SWAT teams buying the Wombat and are seeing a lot more customers from the industrial sectors,\u201d Wagstaff said. \u201cLike the people inspecting metadata centers and some school district buildings.\u201d<\/p>\n
Their rock crawling drone is now in nearly every state. Wagstaff said that people are surprised to learn that only a few have been sold in the Cowboy State and that was to WYDOT.\u00a0<\/p>\n
NASA has just ordered the Muskrat, and Wagstaff said he is excited for the future of his Wyoming-centered company. He said the key is to keep it simple and design their drones for efficiency.<\/p>\n
Jackie Dorothy can be reached at jackie@cowboystatedaily.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When NASA needed to inspect a tight crawlspace for its Artemis 3 project, they contacted a small tech…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":581375,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[61,60,82,247],"class_list":["post-581374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=581374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581374\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/581375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=581374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=581374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=581374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}