David S. Mittman, RAPID Team Lead

Senior Member of Technical Staff, Planning Software Systems
Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology
Mail Stop 301-250D, 4800 Oak Grove Drive
Pasadena, California 91109-8099, USA

David Mittman is the Task Manager for Human System Interaction within the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate’s Human Robotic Systems Project, and oversees the implementation of new operations technologies for JPL’s ATHLETE robot. David also leads the development of a set of common inter-center advanced operations technologies for JSC’s Space Exploration Vehicle, ARC’s K10 rovers, LaRC’s Lunar Surface Manipulation System crane and JPL’s ATHLETE rover.

Jay Torres, RAPID Cognizant Engineer

Member of Technical Staff, Planning Software Systems
Mail Stop 301-250D, 4800 Oak Grove Drive
Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91109-8099, USA

R. Jay Torres is a staff member of the Planning Software Systems Group at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA. Jay is the Cognizant Engineer and Lead Developer for the RAPID inter-center operations command and telemetry protocol. Jay is the also lead developer for the Maestro Planning application for the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) Project.

Kimberly A. Hambuchen, RAPID JSC Lead

Aerospace Engineer, Robotics Systems and Technology Branch, Mail Stop ER4, 2101 NASA Parkway
NASA/Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas 77058-3607, USA

Kimberly Hambuchen is a robotics engineer in the Software, Robotics and Simulation division at NASA Johnson Space Center. She received a B.E. in biomedical engineering and electrical and computer engineering (1997) and an M.S. (1999) and Ph.D. (2004) in electrical engineering, all from Vanderbilt University. She currently specializes in developing novel methods for remote supervision of space robots over intermediate time delays, and has participated in NASA analog field tests to determine the validity of these methods using multiple NASA robots including the JSC Space Exploration Vehicle and Centaur platforms, the JPL ATHLETE cargo-handling vehicle and the ARC K10 rover. Her other research interests include human-robot interaction and robot perception. She is a former NASA Graduate Student Research Program fellow and previously held a postdoctoral position at NASA through the National Research Council.

Robert R. Burridge, Ph.D., RAPID Sequencer Lead

Senior Scientist, Robotics and Artificial Intelligence, 1012 Hercules Ave
TRACLabs, Inc, Houston, Texas 77058-2722, USA

Dr. Burridge received a dual B.A. in Mathematics and Engineering Sciences (Electrical) from Yale University, and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Michigan. He has spent most of the time since 1997 as a Senior Scientist at TRACLabs, providing support to NASA JSC’s Intelligent Systems Branch and Robotic Technologies Branch. The focus of his research has been on Human-Robot Interaction, specifically in adjustable autonomy and intelligent robot supervision. He was Principal Investigator for the EVA Robotic Assistant (ERA) project, where he was responsible for development and field-testing of a small autonomous mobile robot designed to assist astronauts on a planetary surface. In 2005, he was JSC lead for Robonaut in the Peer-to-Peer project, which sought to improve human-robot teamwork. In 2007, he was the JSC lead for an inter-center project investigating remote command and control of several different robots across time delay. This team developed the Predictive Interactive Graphical Interface (PIGI), for which Dr. Burridge produced several of the key software components. PIGI helps compensate for time delay between a remote operator and a robot. He has worked with Robonaut, Centaur, and SEV, and is a founding member of the RAPID group, which is developing an inter-center standard for robot communication.

Mark B. Allan, RAPID ARC Co-Lead

Senior Software Engineer, Intelligent Robotics Group, Mail Stop 269-2
NASA/Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California 94035, USA

Mark B. Allan is a Senior Software Engineer with the Intelligent Robotics Group at NASA Ames Research Center. Mark specializes in data visualization and has worked in the areas of ground control systems for remote exploration, novel human-computer interfaces, massively parallel data flow architectures, and flight simulators. Current topics of interest include the use of virtual worlds to effectively explore remote worlds, application of technology to enhance individual and team effectiveness, and architectures that enable efficient human-robotic coordination.

Hans H. Utz, RAPID ARC Co-Lead

Staff Scientist, Intelligent Robotics Group, Mail Stop 269-3
NASA/Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California 94035, USA

Hans Utz is a Senior Systems Scientist for the Carnegie Mellon University working with the Intelligent Robotics Group (IRG) at NASA Ames Research Center. He is the software lead for IRG's rover platforms. His work is concerned with the development of advanced software architectures for autonomous mobile robotics. Before joining NASA ARC, he was a PhD student at the Department of Neuroinformatics, University of Ulm, Germany. He designed the robotics middleware Miro and coached the Ulm Sparrows, a project on "autonomous mobile robotics in highly dynamic environments," which is probably better known as robot soccer. He has a doctorate in Computer Science from the University of Ulm, Germany.

The RAPID Team