R&D programs for the US Navy,
Department of Defense. Besides the
many aspects of welding, Castner is
also involved with automated guided
vehicle technologies.
Bala Krishnamurthy
For over 25 years, Bala
Krishnamurthy has been designing and
developing various programming
languages for Unimate’s various robot
lines. She is the winner in the technology development category. From the
early ‘80s, Ms. Krishnamurthy was a pioneer in the field of electric and hydraulic
industrial robots. She was responsible
for adapting the Unimation VAL
language that was originally designed
for the later series PUMA electric robot
to the earlier hydraulic Unimate robot.
She also led the software design and
development for Unimation’s third
generation UNIVAL controller.
Following Joe Engelberger from
Unimation to his new company —
HelpMate Robotics — she led the team
from the mid ‘80s to the mid ‘90s that
developed the software that allowed
completely autonomous courier robots
to navigate throughout hospitals. In
1997, Krishnamurthy founded
Aeolean, Inc., a company specializing
in the design of custom software
solutions for high-tech applications and
is the company’s CEO.
She has designed systems and
software for such products as a floor
cleaning robot, a communications
system on a multi-robot platform, and
next-generation robots for a European
manufacturer. Krishnamurthy is the
first female recipient of an Engelberger
Robotics Award.
government robotics
projects, and this work
helped shape the entire
robotics industry.
The Mars Sojourner
rover; a free-flying robot
camera used on the
Space Shuttle; and the
two Dante robot volcano
explorers are some of his
accomplishments. He is
also a leader in the
National Robotics
Engineering Consortium
(NREC) that was formed to transfer
robot technologies developed by NASA
into the commercial robotics industry.
Lavery is currently responsible for
two future Mars exploration rover
missions in 2008 and 2009, the Mars
Advanced Technology Program, the
NASA Astrobiology Field Laboratory,
and the design and development
oversight of the next generation of
robotic Mars exploration spacecraft.
He is also involved with the NASA
Robotics Alliance Project (RAP) to
inspire K- 12 students in robotics.
Marvin Minsky.
Rodney Brooks.
the winner in the education category.
The Beginning
Martin Hägele
David Lavery
David Lavery is the Program
Executive for Solar System Exploration
for NASA and is the winner in the
leadership category. For a dozen years,
Lavery led NASA’s Telerobotics
Technology Development Program
with responsibility for content and
direction of robotics and planetary
exploration research efforts. His
leadership of the program was crucial
to the NASA flight programs, other
Martin Hägele has led the Robot
Systems Department at the Fraunhofer
Institute for Manufacturing Engineering
and Automation IPA in Stuttgart,
Germany for 14 years. Hägele read Joe
Engelberger’s 1989 book, Robots in
Service, and went on to lead the
German study on the market potentials
and challenges of service robots.
One of the service robot designs
he spent the most time on was a robot
to assist the fueling of cars in an automated gas station. The overhead robot
automatically dropped down with the
gas nozzle, located and removed the
gas cap, and carefully filled the tank
according to the customer’s orders. He
also worked on several generations of
mobile robots developed as museum
docents, roving in shopping centers,
and for home applications.
These efforts led the way for the
future service robot applications. He
presently leads a large-scale European
initiative for the creation of a new
family of Small and Medium-sized
Enterprise (SME)-suitable robots. He is
Let’s jump back a bit to the
beginning of the robotics age. We’re
not going back as far as Tesla’s robot
boat or even to Grey Walter’s tortoise,
but to the beginning of the industrial
robot age and Joe Engelberger. George
Devol was the innovator and original
patent holder of “a programmed article
transfer system” that later became the
Unimate robot.
Devol searched out many companies to fund his ‘hair-brained scheme’
and finally was sent to a Connecticut
company — Manning, Maxwell, and
Moorehead — where 31-year-old
Joseph Engelberger happened to be
the chief of engineering in the aircraft
products division. They later met at a
company cocktail party in 1956 and
the rest we’ll say is “the spark that set
off flames of the robotics industry.”
Joseph Engelberger became
known as the ‘Father of Robotics,’ not
only for his innovative implementation
of this new industrial technology, but
for keeping the spark alive and spreading robotics throughout the industry.
Taking a step backwards, George Devol
is sometimes referred to as the
‘Grandfather of Robotics’ for passing
the spark to Joe.
Service Robots
I’d like to step aside from a
discussion of the growing industrial
aspects of robotics and turn towards
the service side of robotics, the
direction that Joe Engelberger has
taken himself in his later years. This is
SERVO 09.2007 81
