- Metecs News -

We are delighted to welcome aboard the newest addition to the METECS team.

Thomas Brain is a recent graduate from the University of Texas where he obtained a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering. While there, Thomas was also a contributer to a joint project between NASA and the University of Texas. This project simulated a two-body rendezvous using NASA's Trick simulation environment and also integrated real-time output of Trick with the Visualization Lab at UT.

Welcome aboard Thomas!

Labels: company, team

Hurricane Ike has changed life in the Houston/Galveston area in just a matter of hours.

Metecs would like to express our sympathies to those who lost so much in the storm and the aftermath. We are looking forward to getting back to work at Johnson Space Center and getting our communities back up and running.

Labels: company

Patrick McCartney, a robotics simulation engineer at METECS, spoke to a group of high school students at Cleveland High School in Cleveland, Tennessee last week. Mr. McCartney spoke at Cleveland High School last fall and was invited to come speak again to a new group of students who will be studying biomedical engineering as part of "Project Lead the Way".

Patrick talked about the history of the US space program, provided some examples of how technology developed at NASA has been applied in the medical field, and then transitioned into how robotic manipulators are currently being used to assemble the International Space Station. He also presented detailed information about work he recently performed preparing a high-fidelity simulation to analyze a robotic operation on the Space Station and another application that is being used to develop a rescue scenario for the upcoming Hubble Space Telescope maintenance mission.

It was clear from the numerous questions that the students were very interested in the material being presented. Patrick would like to thank everyone who came and also for being very respectful and attentive during the event. Patrick would also like to thank teacher Erin Hattabaugh for the opportunity to share about his work at METECS and with NASA.

Labels: team

METECS is very grateful to have had three wonderful interns with us this summer. Not only were they a great addition to our team this summer, they also accomplished a great deal!


Burton Chen came to METECS from the University of Texas and worked on implementing a Coulomb friction model into NASA's robotics simulation. The friction model uses an iterative numerical procedure proposed by Y.M. Kao, Y. Yang, and L. Nguyen. Burton was able to complete the implementation and show that the method successfully eliminated certain noise and unwanted behavior in the joint rates, improving our robotics simulation fidelity.

Gage Eads is also from the University of Texas. Gage worked on simulation code that models line-plane contact. This model uses collision detection to verify an intersection between a line and a plane, and then computes the necessary forces and moment about the two interacting objects to realistically simulate contact. Using this software, complex simulations using points, lines and planes are able to model intricate robotic interactions that occur on the Space Station.

Drake Deno returned this summer from Purdue University for his third internship with Metecs. Drake continued development on a contact modeling tool that he had worked on in previous internships. This tool allows users to define contact geometries and surface properties graphically. It then exports this data into a contact simulation which will adequately generate forces and torques generates by contact of the interfaces. Drake's tool was quickly put to use to generate a model used to help the astronauts train a robotics operation where a sensitive payload on the International Space Station will be inserted and extracted from a Japanese vehicle.

All in all, the interns did some amazing work! We hope they enjoyed their time here as much as we did, and we hope the experience, knowledge, and contacts they acquired will be useful to them in the future.


Good luck Burton, Drake, and Gage in your studies and your future endeavors. We hope to hear from you soon.

Labels: company, team

Metecs employee Tom Smith was the recipient of an Elite Team Award from the Automation, Robotics, and Simulation Division.

Tom contributed to the graphics integration as part of a team that demonstrated their distributed simulation capability for the Constellation program.

Congratulations Tom!

Labels: awards, team

Metecs is happy to welcome aboard three interns this summer.

Drake Deno is a senior Mechanical Engineering student at Purdue University and is returning for his third internship with Metecs. We have been very grateful to Drake for his work in his previous two internships and we are very happy to have him back helping us again.

We also have two first time interns with us from the University of Texas. Gage Eads is a third year Electrical Engineering student, who has also studied abroad at the University of Melbourne. Burton Chen also joins us from the University of Texas. Burton is a fourth year Electrical Engineering student there.

Welcome aboard to our two new interns Burton and Gage, and welcome back to Drake. We are very excited to have you as part of the Metecs team.

Labels: company, team

Metecs employee Frank Graffagnino recently received a Johnson Space Center Group Achievement Award for his role in the DOUG Graphics for Exploration Development Team. The award reads:

For your initiative and innovation in enhancing the DOUG graphics software to support the Constellation Program, CEV, CLV, and Lunar surface operations.

Congratulations to Frank and the other members of the group.

Labels: awards, team

Congratulations to METECS employees Pat McCartney and Frank Graffagnino for their recent NASA awards.

Frank received an Elite Team award for his help in adding EVA training scenarios for the Solar Array Wing repair in the Virtual Reality lab at Johnson Space Center. This helped provide critical repair scenario evaluation and procedure verification support, which contributed to the successful repair to the STS-120 mission.

Pat also received an Elite Team award in recognition of his "technical excellence and quick response to enable and perform analysis with an integrated SSRMS and Shuttle PRLA contact simulation for 1J/A."

Congratulations to Pat and Frankie!

Labels: awards, team