Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer

NASA, GM Take Giant Leap in Robotic Technology
NASA and General Motors (GM) are working together to accelerate development of the next generation of robots and related technologies for use in the automotive and aerospace industries. Engineers and scientists from NASA and GM worked together through a Space Act Agreement at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston to build a new humanoid robot capable of working side-by-side with people. Using leading-edge control, sensor and vision technologies, future robots could assist astronauts during hazardous space missions and help GM build safer cars and plants. The two organizations, with the help of engineers from Oceaneering Space Systems of Houston, developed and built the next iteration of Robonaut. Robonaut 2, or R2, is a faster, more dexterous and more technologically advanced robot. This new-generation robot can use its hands to do work beyond the scope of prior humanoid machines. R2 can work safely alongside people, a necessity both on Earth and in space.

Rice Varieties for the Processed, Specialty, and Organic Rice Industry
The U.S. is a major world supplier of rice, with half of the nation's crop being exported. Dr. Anna McClung of the Agricultural Research Service's (ARS) Rice Research Unit in Beaumont, Texas, has worked closely with industry and university partners, including Texas A&M University, to develop rice cultivars with improved disease resistance, yield, and processing characteristics in alignment with the ARS mission to help sustain and improve the competitiveness of the U.S. rice industry.

These formal and informal collaborations have resulted in the development of eight new rice varieties which, over the last five years have been grown in Texas, Mississippi and South Carolina, and are being commercialized by international food companies Mars Foods, Inc.; Riviana Foods, Inc.; and Campbell Soup Company. Texas-based food companies such as Doguet's Rice Mill, Arrowhead Mills, and Texas Organic have also benefited from the new rice varieties.

Over one million pounds of seed rice of these cultivars have been sold for planting by farmers in the South. As a result, a new quick-cooking rice food product has been commercialized, a domestically produced aromatic rice is in the marketplace to compete with imports, new rice cultivars suited for production on organic farms are being grown, a higher yielding cultivar suited for canned rice products is in production, and rice utilization has expanded from the whole grain market for use as a flour by the ingredients industry.