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Michael Swan

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4800 Oak Grove Drive

Pasadena, CA 91109

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347F - Robotic Mobility

Michael Swan

Robotics Systems Engineer

Biography

Michael is a Robotics Systems Engineer at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in the Robotic Surface Mobility Group (347F). He received his B.S. in Computer Engineering from Walla Walla University and his M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Southern California (USC). He has 3+ years of professional software engineering experience from working with Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR). He has reverse engineered and architected large projects, developed terrain recognition AI while interning at JPL, and worked at the USC Interaction Lab on a human-robot interaction framework called HARMONI.

Education

  • M.S. Computer Science, University of Southern California (2021)
  • B.S. Computer Engineering, Walla Walla University (2015)

Professional Experience

  • Robotics Systems Engineer, Jet Propulsion Laboratory (July 2021 - Present)
  • Research Intern, Jet Propulsion Laboratory (Feb. 2020 - July 2021)
  • Student Researcher, Interaction Lab, University of Southern California (Oct. 2019 - July 2021)
  • Computer Engineer, Naval Air Systems Command (Feb. 2018 - Aug. 2019)
  • Computer Engineer, DCS Corporation (Sept. 2015 - Feb. 2018)

Research Interests

  • Robotic surface and aerial autonomy
  • Perception
  • Simulation
  • Robotic system architecture

Awards

  • [2021] Best Paper Finalist Award: CVPR Workshop - AI for Space [AI4Mars: A Dataset for Terrain-Aware Autonomous Driving on Mars]
  • [2020] Major Space Act Award: JPL Software of the Year [Soil Property and Object Classification (SPOC)]
  • [2018] Performance Award for work on correlation of software defects and requirement volatility: NAVAIR
  • [2017] Mentorship Award: DCS Corporation

Publications

2024
  1. T. S. Vaquero, G. Daddi, R. Thakker, M. Paton, A. Jasour, M. Strub, R. M. Swan, R. Royce, M. Gildner, P. Tosi, M. Veismann, P. Gavrilov, E. Marteau, J. Bowkett, D. Loret de Mola Lemus, Y. Kumar Nakka, B. Hockman, A. Orekhov, T. Hasseler, C. Leake, B. Nuernberger, P. Proenca, W. Reid, W. Talbot, N. Georgiev, T. Pailevanian, A. Archanian, E. Ambrose, J. Jasper, R. Etheredge, C. Roman, D. Levine, K. Otsu, S. Yearicks, H. Melikyan, R. Rieber, K. Carpenter, J. Nash, A. Jain, L. Shiraishi, M. Robinson, M. Travers, H. Choset, J. Burdick, A. Gardner, M. Cable, M. Ingham, and M. Ono, "EELS: Autonomous Snake-like Robot with Task and Motion Planning Capabilities for Ice World Exploration," Science Robotics, vol. 9, no. 88, 13 March 2024.
  2. M. Paton, R. Rieber, S. Cruz, M. Gildner, C. Abma, K. Abma, S. Aghli, E. Ambrose, A. Archanian, E. Bagshaw, C. Baroco, A. Blackstock, J. Bowkett, M. Cable, E. Cartaya, G. Daddi, T. Drevinskas, R. Etheredge, T. Gall, A. Gardner, P. Gavrilov, N. Georgiev, K. Graham, B. Hockman, B. Jones, S. Linn, M. Malaska, E. Marteau, N. Maslen, H. Melikyan, Y. Kumar Nakka, J. Nelson, M. Pazzini, M. Peticco, M. Prior-Jones, M. Robinson, C. Roman, R. Royce, M. Ryan, L. Shiraishi, C. Stenner, M. Strub, R. M. Swan, B. Swerdlow, R. Thakker, L. P. Tosi, T. Tran, T. Stegun Vaquero, M. Veismann, T. Wood, H. Zade, M. Ono, "2023 EELS Field Tests at Athabasca Glacier as an Icy Moon Analogue Environment," 2024 IEEE Aerospace Conference, Big Sky, MT, USA, 05 March 2024.
  3. R. Thakker, M. Paton, M. Strub, M. Swan, T. Vaquero, B. Jones, G. Daddi, R. Royce, J. Bowkett, D. Loret de Mola Lemus, D. Pastor Moreno, Y. Kumar Nakka, K. Otsu, T. Hasseler, C. Leake, B. Nuernberger, P. Proenca, W. Talbot, A. Orekhov, A. Jain, M. Robinson, R. Etheredge, M. Travers, H. Choset, M. Ingham, J. Burdick and M. Ono, "To Boldly Go Where No Robots Have Gone Before – Part 4: NEO Autonomy for Robustly Exploring Unknown, Extreme Environments with Versatile Robots," AIAA Scitech 2024 Forum, Orlando, Florida, USA, pp. 1-14, 08 January 2024.
2023
  1. Abhishek Cauligi, R. Michael Swan, Masahiro Ono, Shreyansh Daftry, John Elliott, Larry Matthies, Deegan Atha, "ShadowNav: Crater-Based Localization for Nighttime and Permanently Shadowed Region Lunar Navigation," IEEE Aerospace Conference, Big Sky, MT, 04 March 2023.
2022
  1. Larry Matthies, Shreyansh Daftry, Scott Tepsuporn, Yang Cheng, Deegan Atha, R. Michael Swan Sanjna Ravichandar and Masahiro Ono, "Lunar Rover Localization Using Craters as Landmarks," IEEE Aerospace Conference (AERO), 05 March 2022.
  2. D. Atha, R. M. Swan, A. Didier, Z. Hasnain, M. Ono, "Multi-mission Terrain Classifier for Safe Rover Navigation and Automated Science," 2022 IEEE Aerospace Conference (AERO), pp. 1-13, 05 March 2022.
2021
  1. R. M. Swan, D. Atha, H. Leopold, M. Gildner, S. Oij, C. Chiu, and M. Ono, "AI4MARS: A Dataset for Terrain-Aware Autonomous Driving on Mars," Proceedings of the IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, pp. 1982-1991, 01 January 2021.