Dr. Antonio Diaz-Calderon is a Senior Member of Technical Staff with the Mobility and Manipulation Group at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, where he has been since 2003. His current research activities focus on planetary manipulation, sample acquisition, and sample handling. His current flight activities include working as a rover driver for the Opportunity rover and as Spacecraft/Rover Engineer responsible for monitoring the health, safety and performance of the Mobility/Instrument Deploying Device component of the MER Spirit and Opportunity spacecraft during flight operations. Dr. Diaz-Calderon received the BSEE in 1987 and the M.S. in Computer Science in 1990 from Monterrey Institute of Technology (Mexico City, Mexico), and M.S. in 1993 in Engineering and Ph.D. in 2000 in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University.
Automated instrument placement from planetary landers and rover. Automated planetary manipulation for sample acquisition and handling, sensor fusion, state estimation, navigation/motion planning, position estimation/localization, and mapping.