Organizers

Panelist Bios

DARPA Tactical Technology Office: is developing small, scalable, vertical-takeoff ducted fan UAVs in the range of 10 - 100 lbs. A small version is being developed within the Micro Air Vehicle (MAV) ACTD, and will deliver and test a number of systems using soldiers from the 25th infantry division in Hawaii during the timeframe 2004 - 2006. If these are successful, these systems will remain behind as organic assets for those troops. Larger airframes are being developed within the Organic Air Vehicle (OAV) program. Nineteen- and twenty nine-inch airframes will be flown that are capable of carrying larger payloads with improved capabilities. Both systems are intended for eventual incorporation into the Army Future Combat System (FCS) program.

Gary Cruz: is currently at Honeywell and is the Program Manager for the DARPA Organic Aerial Vehicle (OAV) program. His experience also includes the FCS trade studies, IPT lead, Project Engineer and Lead Systems Engineer. He has worked vehicles like the Crusader, CH-47, G-IV, ATR 72, Dash 8, C-160, Convair 580, RC-12K, Jetstream 41, IPTN N250, and Learjet Model 60 & 45.

James C. Kellogg is a research engineer for the Tactical Electronic Warfare Division at the Naval Research Lab (NRL) developing UAVs. He was the payloads engineer on the Dragon Eye and SeaALL UAVs, and is the principal investigator for NRL’s micro air vehicle research. His present area of research is robotic platforms with multi-mode mobility and capabilities for self-refueling

Dr. Tom Adams has been with Boeing Aerospace since 1997 and is currently with the Mathematics and Computing Technology Group. He is the Unmanned Air Vehicle representative to the Future Combat Systems Spiral Development and Technology Planning Integrated Product Team. He has extensive experience in the development of applications of artificial intelligence technology including intelligence analysis workstations for tracking the development of foreign weapon systems, telemetry analysis, and chemical weapons facility modeling; a model-based fault diagnosis and load management system for the space station; the control architecture for an autonomous underwater vehicle; energy and environmental modeling for the pulp and paper and textile industries; and integration In earlier work, Dr. Adams has been employed by Stanford Research International, ESL, Advanced Decision Systems, Battelle Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Computron

Dr. Mark Mears is a member of Control Center of Excellence at the Air Vehicles Directorate at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. He has been involved with Reconfigurable Control and Intelligent/Learning control work to make aircraft more robust to damage and to optimize performance based on remaining capability. He has also worked with DARPA on the MICA (Mixed Initiative Control of Automa-teams) program that developed technology for cooperative control of multiple UAVs used for military missions. His talk will cover some of the issues related to collaborative, coordinated, cooperative control of multiple UAVs.

Prof. Ronald Fearing is faculty at the University of California Berkeley in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences. His principal research interests are in micro robotics, tactile sensing, teletaction, and dexterous manipulation. He received the Presidential Young Investigator Award in 1991.

D-STAR Engineering: Mr. Dev is founder and President of D-STAR Engineering Corporation, specializing in research, design, development and manufacture of automotive, aerospace and propulsion / power systems. D-STAR is currently focused on developing advanced small diesel and turbine engines for UAVs and UGVs, as well as power systems for hybrid-electric applications. Mr. Hoffman oversees much of the piston engine programs, including the 1.5 hp and 3.0 hp piston engine programs for MAV application. He also helps to manage the 50-Watt soldier micro-generator set program and is the principal investigator of the upcoming 700-Watt miniature tactical generator set / auxiliary power unit program. Mr. Hoffman also aids writing technical proposals for new product opportunities. He received both his Bachelor of Science and Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering at Bucknell University, and is a member of the ASME and SAE.

Prof. Nikolaos P. Papanikolopoulos is both the Director of the Center for Distributed Robotics and faculty member of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Minnesota. He has authored or coauthored more than 160 journal and conference papers in robotics-related research. In addition to his many awards, he is also an NSF CAREER receipient.

Dr. Geoffrey Barrows is President of Centeye, a firm that specializes in the development of novel and unique visual microsensors for robotics applications. He was recently named a "Top Young Innovator" by the MIT Technology Review and included in their TR100 list for 2003.

Dr. David Musliner is a Principal Research Scientist at the Automated Reasoning group at the Honeywell Technology Center. His current research projects include developing automatic controller synthesis techniques for hybrid systems, and developing extensions to the Cooperative Intelligent Real-Time Control Architecture (CIRCA) for multi-agent planning and control in real-time domains including unmanned vehicle control and network security.

Dr. Larry Matthies is Supervisor of the Machine Vision Group at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). He obtained a PhD in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University in 1989 and has been at JPL since. His group was a major software contributor to the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) mission now operating on Mars, including software for the Descent Image Motion Estimation System (DIMES) and stereo vision, obstacle avoidance, and visual odometry onboard the rovers. His talk will survey work at JPL on machine vision for autonomous navigation of UAV's, including visual feature tracking for UAV state estimation, mapping the terrain below a UAV, and autonomous landing hazard avoidance.