The Sting Racing Team
Meet the scientists from Georgia Tech and SAIC who have worked for more than a year to make Sting 1 a reality.
Tucker Balch
Georgia Tech, Associate Professor, School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech, and Co-Director, Borg Lab, and Director, Institute for Personal Robots in Education (IPRE)
Tucker's robotics research interests include outdoor perception and navigation for mobile robots, machine learning for robot navigation and large-scale multi-robot systems. His recent work with IPRE is focused on understanding how robots can be used to help students learn more effectively. Balch received the B.S. and Ph.D. in computer science from Georgia Tech in 1984 and 1998 respectively. From 1988 to 1995 he flew F-15s in the U.S. Air Force. He has published more than 80 technical articles and two books on robotics.
Vince Camp
Georgia Tech, Associate Director of Georgia Tech Research Institute's (GTRI) Aerospace, Transportation and Advanced Systems Laboratory, Chief, Systems Development Division
Vince's experience in development of large-scale systems includes production of mobile integrated air-defense systems for DOD customers. Vince also directs the intelligent autonomous systems development efforts in GTRI focusing on systems integration and test of unmanned air vehicles. Ground vehicle interest in the lab includes development of automated processes for highway maintenance. Other vehicle systems work includes development and integration of innovative technologies for military vehicles to improve crew survivability in blast and ballistic threat environments.
Henrik I. Christensen, Ph.D.
Georgia Tech, KUKA Chair of Robotics, Professor of Computing and Director of the Center for Robotics and Intelligent Machines (RIM@GT)
Henrik was initially trained in mechanical engineering and worked subsequently with MAN/B&W Diesel. He earned M.Sc. and Ph.D. electrical engineering degrees from Aalborg University in Denmark, 1987 and 1990, respectively. Upon graduation, Henrik has participated in a large number of international research projects across three continents. He held positions at Aalborg University, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Sweden's Royal Institute of Technology before joining Georgia Tech.
Henrik's research centers on robotics with an emphasis on a systems perspective. Solutions must have a strong theoretical basis, a correspondingly well-defined implementation and must be evaluated in realistic settings —" real systems for real applications!" His research has involved collaborations with ABB, Electrolux, Daimler-Chrysler, KUKA, iRobot, WEDA, Apple, Partek Forest, and Volvo. He has published more than 250 contributions across robotics, vision and artificial intelligence. Henrik served as the founding chairman of EURON, the European Robotics Research Network (1999-2006), and as the research coordinator of ECVision (2000-2004). He has led and participated in a large number of EU projects such as VAP, CoSy, CogVis, SMART, CAMERA, ECVision, EURON, Cogniron, and Neurobotics.
Thomas Collins
Georgia Tech, Principal Research Engineer
Tom currently has shared appointments with the Georgia Tech Research Institute and the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He earned his M.S. in mechanical engineering in 1980, an M.S. in electrical engineering in 1982, and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering in 1994, all from Georgia Tech. His research interests include robotics, digital hardware design, modeling and simulation, and high-performance computing. His robotics contributions began with the IBM 7565 manipulator, a large, high-accuracy hydraulic/electric robot targeted at precision assembly tasks. He later served as a hardware and software integrator for unmanned aerial vehicles, and he has worked extensively with the Mobile Robotics Laboratory and the Borg Laboratory of the Georgia Tech College of Computing on numerous research projects, including DARPA Tactical Mobile Robotics and DARPA Mobile Autonomous Robot Software. Tom has also taught courses in both mechanical and electrical engineering. For the Urban Challenge effort, he was involved in the design and specification of the actuation, sensing, and computing hardware, and he has served as the lead in system testing.
Jill D. Crisman
SAIC, Senior Research Scientist
Jill received her Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University in 1990 in electrical and computer engineering where her thesis topic was in unstructured road detection. Following graduate school, she joined the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department of Northeastern University as a faculty member. While there, she directed the Robotics and Vision System Laboratory, produced 50 publications, and received tenure in 1996. Her work there varied from biologically-based lobster robots, robot hands, wheelchair robots, and automated real-time vision systems. In 2001, she left Northeastern University to join the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering as one of the founding faculty members. There she helped reinvent engineering education and taught project-based courses to enhance the theoretical education. She joined SAIC in September 2004. As part of SAIC's independent research and development effort during Grand Challenge '05 in collaboration with the Red Team, she worked on dirt-path-following and stereo-vision-based navigation technologies. For this work, she received SAIC's Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation Group's Science and Technology Performance Award. Jill's work for the Urban Challenge has focused on dirt-path detection and calibration of the sensors.
Magnus Egerstedt
Georgia Tech, Associate Professor, Director of GRITS Lab
Born in Stockholm, Sweden, Magnus is an associate professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he has been on the faculty since 2001. He also holds an adjunct appointment in the Division of Interactive and Intelligent Computing with the College of Computing at Georgia Tech.
Magnus earned his M.S. in engineering physics and Ph.D. in applied mathematics from the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, in 1996 and 2000 respectively. He also received a B.A. degree in philosophy from Stockholm University in 1996. He spent 2000-2001 as a postdoctoral fellow at the Division of Engineering and Applied Science at Harvard University. His research interests include optimal control as well as modeling and analysis of hybrid and discrete event systems, with emphasis on motion planning, control, and coordination of mobile robots, and he has authored over 100 papers in the areas of robotics and controls. He is the chair of the Systems and Controls Technical Interest Group at the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Tech and the associate director of research at Georgia Tech's Center for Robotics and Intelligent Machines. Magnus is a senior member of the IEEE and an associate editor for the IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine, he received the ECE/GT Outstanding Junior Faculty Member Award in 2005, and the CAREER award from the U.S. National Science Foundation in 2003.
John 'Iain' Hanna
SAIC, Program Manager
Iain graduated with a first-class honors B.Sc. in aeronautical engineering from the University of Glasgow, Scotland, followed by a diploma in management studies from University of West of England and an M.Sc. in digital system engineering from Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh. His first job out of college was with Westland Helicopters working in the Flight Controls Department. He then moved into flight simulation, developing flight dynamics models and flight control system models at Thales. At BAE Systems he worked on flight, radar, and, ships' bridge simulators simulation devices, eventually moving onto the Combined Arms Tactical Trainer (UKCATT) for the British Army. For the past five years he has worked with SAIC as a systems engineer in simulation and training devices. Iain has been a professional soccer player and represented Scotland at the youth level.
Mike Hoffman
SAIC, Software Engineer
Michael holds a B.S. in computer science from the University of Central Florida. He has worked for SAIC as a software engineer since 2005. Michael is a developer for the Army's One Semi-Automated Forces (OneSAF) Objective System (OOS) with primary focus on research and development efforts. As part of the Urban Challenge, his work has focused on creating a OneSAF simulation test harness for Team Sting which allows them to quickly develop scenarios and test the vehicle's logic.
Ben Johnson
Georgia Tech, Research Scientist
Ben received his B.S. in computer engineering from Georgia Tech in 2005. Before working on the Urban Challenge, he worked at the Georgia Tech Research Institute in the Human Systems Engineering Branch developing hardware and software for human factors experiments. He has also worked on three entries for the Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition. His work on the Urban Challenge includes hardware integration and sensor software.
Karl Kluge
SAIC, Senior Research Scientist
After receiving a B.S. in computer science from Michigan State University in 1985, Karl attended Carnegie Mellon University, where he received his M.S. (1988) and Ph.D. (1993) in computer science. Following graduate school, he worked at the University of Michigan as a research scientist in the Artificial Intelligence Lab. He joined SAIC in October of 2001. Over the course of his career, Karl has been involved in a number of DARPA ground vehicle autonomy programs, including the Autonomous Land Vehicle, Unmanned Ground Vehicle Demo II, Tactical Mobile Robots, and PerceptOR. His work has focused on applying computer vision to robot navigation tasks such as road following, color- and texture-based terrain classification, and simultaneous localization and mapping using monocular vision in indoor environments. As part of SAIC's IR&D effort during Grand Challenge '05 in collaboration with the Red Team, he worked on road-following and stereo-vision-based navigation technologies. Karl’s work for the Urban Challenge has focused on vision-based lane detection and tracking.
Matt Powers
Georgia Tech, Research Scientist
Matt received B.S. degrees in mechanical engineering and computer science from Northwestern University in 2001. In 2002, he enrolled as a Ph.D. student at Georgia Tech, where he worked with his advisor, Dr. Tucker Balch, concentrating on research in multi-robot systems, behavior-based control, and field robotics. In 2006, he took a leave of absence from his studies to work on the DARPA Urban Challenge full time. Matt's previous DARPA program experience includes work on the MARS-2020 and LAGR programs. His work on the DARPA Urban Challenge has concentrated on behavior-based control, reactive decision making and software integration. Following the DARPA Urban Challenge, Matt plans on completing his Ph.D. in computer science at Georgia Tech.
Bob Schafrik
SAIC, Research Scientist
Bob has a degree in computer science from George Mason University. His expertise is in autonomous vehicle navigation and robotic sensors. He contributed to a successful entry in the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge.
Joshua Witter
SAIC, Software Engineer
After receiving a B.S. in computer science from Syracuse University in 2004, Josh began working for SAIC developing simulation software for the U.S. Army and Marine Corps. During this time he specialized in modeling and communication interfaces in OneSAF, an HLA- and DIS-compliant semi-automated simulation application used to train armed forces in various aspects of warfare via simulated scenario creation, execution and after-action review. He was brought onboard the Sting Racing Team for their 2007 effort, tasked to implement a DIS interface between OneSAF and the robot as well as model the various sensors involved in simulating a virtual environment in which to test the car.
Dave Wooden
Georgia Tech, Postdoctoral Research
Dave received his Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering in 2006 from the Georgia Institute of Technology. As a graduate student, his research focused on control theory and planning algorithms for autonomous ground vehicles. He continued this work as a member of Sting Racing, applying much of his doctoral research to Sting 1. This included dynamic path planning techniques using combinatorial methods, as well as the architectural design of the robot's hybrid control system.