President Boston Dynamics, 1992 - Present
Professor EE&CS, MIT, 1986 - 1995
Associate Professor CS & Robotics, CMU 1981 - 1986
Staff Engineer JPL, 1977 - 1980

Ph.D., 1977 MIT
BSEE, 1973 Northeastern University

Less than half the Earth's landmass is accessible to existing wheeled and tracked vehicles. But people and animals using their legs can go almost anywhere on Earth. Our mission at Boston Dynamics is to develop a new breed of rough-terrain robots that capture the mobility, autonomy and speed of living creatures. Such robots will travel in outdoor terrain that is too steep, rutted, rocky, wet, muddy, and snowy for conventional vehicles.  They will also travel in cities and in our homes, doing chores and providing care, where steps, stairways and household clutter limit the utility of wheeled vehicles. Robots meeting these goals will have terrain sensors, sophisticated computing and power systems, advanced actuators and dynamic controls. I will give a status report on BigDog, an example of such rough-terrain robots. It is a 100 kg quadruped robot that balances actively as it operates on a variety of outdoor terrains, carries a 65 kg load, runs travels at up to 11 kph.