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Kamak Ebadi

Address:

4800 Oak Grove Drive

Pasadena, CA 91109

Member of:

347P - Aerial and Orbital Image Analysis

Kamak Ebadi

Robotics Technologist

Biography

Kamak Ebadi is a robotics technologist who currently serves as a member of the Aerial and Orbital Image Analysis group. He is a member of the Mars2020 Sampling and Catching (SNC) tactical and strategic operations team, which is responsible for commanding the Perseverance rover to collect and store a carefully curated set of rock and soil samples that will be brought back to Earth in the future. Apart from his contributions to the Perseverance rover mission, Kamak is also deeply involved in the development of high-precision orbital maps and Terrain Relative Navigation (TRN) algorithms for guided descent and precise landing on Mars, in support of NASA's Mars Sample Return mission, as well as missions to the moon as part of the NASA Artemis program.

In 2017, Kamak became a doctoral research fellow at JPL, where he worked on a range of cutting-edge research projects while completing his Ph.D. thesis. During this time, he was involved in several notable projects, including collaborative localization and mapping with a team of Mars rover-helicopter, the DARPA Subterranean Challenge, and the simultaneous estimation of the shape and pose of uncooperative space objects.

Education

  • Postdoctoral Fellow - NASA JPL / Caltech, 2021
  • Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) - Electrical and Computer Engineering - Santa Clara University, 2020
  • Master's of Science - Electrical and Computer Engineering - Florida International University, 2012

Professional Experience

  • Robotics Technologist - NASA JPL, 2021 - Present
  • Postdoctoral Fellow - NASA JPL / California Institute of Technology, 2020 - 2021
  • Doctoral Research Fellow - NASA JPL / California Institute of Technology, 2017 - 2020
  • Robotics Engineering Co-Op - Autonomous Drive Group - Nissan Research Center, 2015 - 2017
  • Robotics Engineering Co-Op - Exoskeleton R&D Group - AlterG, 2013 - 2017
  • Research and Teaching Assistant - Santa Clara University, 2013 - 2017
  • 4G/LTE IP Network Engineering Co-Op - Verizon Wireless, 2012

Research Interests

  • Orbital mapping and Terrain relative navigation for guided descent and precise planetary landing
  • Simultaneous 3D localization and mapping (SLAM) for multiagent collaborative systems
  • Autonomous navigation in extreme, and perceptually-degraded environments
  • Machine learning for object detection and semantic segmentation.

Awards

  • Team Bonus Award - for exceptional contributions to the JPL SubT team during the final DARPA SubT Challenge, 2022
  • Mission Design Lead - NASA Planetary Science Summer School (PSSS) - Early mission concept to Enceladus, 2021
  • STAR Award - NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory - California Institute of Technology, 2020
  • 1st place, member of CoSTAR perception team, DARPA Subterranean Challenge, Urban Circuit, 2020
  • 2nd place, member of CoSTAR perception team, DARPA Subterranean Challenge, Tunnel Circuit, 2019
  • Best Doctoral Research Award - School of Engineering - Santa Clara University, 2019
  • 1st place - Space Design Challenge Award, NASA Ames Research Center, 2013

Publications

2024
  1. T. Setterfield, D. Conway, P. Chen, D. Clouse, N. Trawny, A. Johnson, S. Khattak, K. Ebadi, G. Massone, Y. Cheng, and J. Nash, "Enhanced Lander Vision System (ELViS) Algorithms for Pinpoint Landing of the Mars Sample Retrieval Lander," AIAA SCITECH 2024 Forum, Orlando, FL, USA, 08 January 2024.
2023
  1. K. Marshall Seaton, Szilárd Gyalay, Gaia Stucky de Quay, Ethan R. Burnett, C. Adeene Denton, Bryce Doerr, Kamak Ebadi, Stephanie Eckert, Ian. T. W. Flynn, Casey I. Honniball, Shayna Hume, Corbin L. Kling, Julian C. Marohnic, Julia Milton, Claire A. Mondro, Raquel G. Nuno, Caoimhe M. Rooney, Beck E. Strauss, Alfred Nash and Jennifer E. C. Scully, "Astrobiology Exploration at Enceladus: A New Frontiers Mission Concept Study," The Planetary Science Journal, 29 June 2023.
  2. Kamak Ebadi, Lukas Bernreiter, Harel Biggie, Gavin Catt, Yun Chang, Arghya Chatterjee, Christopher E. Denniston, Simon-Pierre Deschênes, Kyle Harlow, Shehryar Khattak, Lucas Nogueira, Matteo Palieri, Pavel Petráček, Matěj Petrlík, Andrzej Reinke, Vít Krátký, Shibo Zhao, Ali-akbar Agha-mohammadi, Kostas Alexis, Christoffer Heckman, Kasra Khosoussi, Navinda Kottege, Benjamin Morrell, Marco Hutter, Fred Pauling, François Pomerleau, Martin Saska, Sebastian Scherer, Roland Siegwart, Jason L. Williams, Luca Carlone, "Present and future of SLAM in extreme environments: The DARPA subT challenge," IEEE Transactions on Robotics, 01 January 2023.
2022
  1. Christopher E. Denniston , Yun Chang , Andrzej Reinke , Kamak Ebadi , Gaurav S. Sukhatme , Luca Carlone , Benjamin Morrell , and Ali-akbar Agha-mohammadi, "Loop Closure Prioritization for Efficient and Scalable Multi-Robot SLAM," IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), vol. 7, no. 4, pp. 9651-9658, 02 October 2022.
  2. Kamak Ebadi, Lukas Bernreiter, Harel Biggie, Gavin Catt, Yun Chang, Arghya Chatterjee, Christopher E. Denniston, Simon-Pierre Deschênes, Kyle Harlow, Shehryar Khattak, Lucas Nogueira, Matteo Palieri, Pavel Petráček, Matěj Petrlík, Andrzej Reinke, Vít Krátký, Shibo Zhao, Ali-akbar Agha-mohammadi, Kostas Alexis, Christoffer Heckman, Kasra Khosoussi, Navinda Kottege, Benjamin Morrell, Marco Hutter, Fred Pauling, François Pomerleau, Martin Saska, Sebastian Scherer, Roland Siegwart, Jason L. Williams, Luca Carlone, "Present and Future of SLAM in Extreme Underground Environments," To appear in IEEE Transactions on Robotics, 02 August 2022.
  3. Yun Chang, Kamak Ebadi, Christopher E. Denniston, Muhammad Fadhil Ginting, Antoni Rosinol, Andrzej Reinke, Matteo Palieri, Jingnan Shi, Arghya Chatterjee, Benjamin Morrell, Ali-akbar Agha-mohammadi, Luca Carlone, "LAMP 2.0: A Robust Multi-Robot SLAM System for Operation in Challenging Large-Scale Underground Environments," IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), vol. 7, no. 4, pp. 9175-9182, 15 July 2022.
  4. Andrzej Reinke, Matteo Palieri, Benjamin Morrell, Yun Chang, Kamak Ebadi, Luca Carlone, Ali-akbar Agha-mohammadi, "LOCUS 2.0: Robust and Computationally Efficient lidar Odometry for Real-Time Underground 3D Mapping," IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, vol. 7, no. 4, pp. 9043-9050, 10 June 2022.
  5. Kamak Ebadi, Kyle Coble, Dima Kogan, Deegan Atha, Russell Schwartz, Curtis Padgett, Joshua Vander Hook, "Toward Autonomous Localization of Planetary Robotic Explorers by Relying on Semantic Mapping," IEEE Aerospace Conference, Big Sky, MT, pp. 1-10, 05 May 2022.
  6. Joshua Vander Hook, Russell Schwartz, Kamak Ebadi, Kyle Coble, and Curtis Padgett, "Topographical Landmarks for Ground-Level Terrain Relative Navigation on Mars," IEEE Aerospace Conference, Big Sky, MT, 05 March 2022.
2021
  1. K. Ebadi, A. Harvard, A. Rahmani, and S. Chung, "Probabilistic Place Recognition for On-Orbit Visual Inspection of Uncooperative Space Objects," AIAA ASCEND Conference, 21 May 2021.
  2. Ali-akbar Agha-mohammadi, et al., "NeBula: Quest for Robotic Autonomy in Challenging Environments; TEAM CoSTAR at the DARPA Subterranean Challenge," Journal of Field Robotics, 21 March 2021.
2020
  1. M. Palieri, B. Morrell, A. Thakur, K. Ebadi, J. Nash, A. Chatterjee, C. Kanellakis, L. Carlone, C. Guaragnella, A. Agha-Mohammadi, "LOCUS: A Multi-Sensor Lidar-Centric Solution for High-Precision Odometry and 3D Mapping in Real-Time," IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, vol. 6, pp. 421–428, 28 December 2020.