TRACLabs, Inc.

TRACLabs, Inc. is an independent research and development company specializing in robotics software, human-robot interaction, and intelligent automation. The company is headquartered in Webster, Texas, adjacent to NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC), reflecting its deep and longstanding partnership with the US space agency. TRACLabs was spun off from Metrica, Inc., a woman-owned small business, and became a Metrica affiliate in 2007. The company has operated as an independent robotics laboratory with over 25 years of continuous experience in the field and was originally founded in 1997.

TRACLabs technical focus centers on three interconnected domains: electronic procedure management, task-level robot programming, and autonomous mission operations. Its flagship product line, the PRIDE Software Suite (Procedure Integrated Development Environment), replaces paper-based operational procedures with an interactive, computer-based system for authoring, executing, monitoring, and analyzing procedures. PRIDE is operationally deployed by NASA for ground operations on the VIPER lunar rover project and has been used aboard the International Space Station (ISS) to manage equipment maintenance and operational workflows.

The CRAFTSMAN toolkit is a ROS-based open-source suite enabling non-robotics-experts to design task-based control interfaces for manipulation and navigation robots. CRAFTSMAN lowers the barrier for operators and mission planners to specify complex robot behaviors without requiring deep programming expertise.

The Autonomy Management Platform (AMP) provides reusable, ontology-driven decision support and human-interface tools for supervisory control of multiple unmanned vehicles simultaneously. AMP incorporates PRONTOE (PRide ONTology Editor), which allows engineers to build and maintain OWL ontologies modeling equipment and tools aboard the ISS.

TRACLabs also developed the control software and human-robot interfaces for the Boston Dynamics ATLAS humanoid robot as part of the DARPA Robotics Challenge, demonstrating capability across mobile manipulation in disaster-response scenarios.

Beyond NASA, TRACLabs has worked with the US Air Force and other defense agencies on autonomous systems and procedure management. The company's research has been supported through numerous SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research) contracts and is widely cited in robotics literature. TRACLabs staff regularly publish at IEEE and ACM robotics conferences and contribute to open-source ROS packages used by the broader community.