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Travis Brown

Address:

4800 Oak Grove Drive

Pasadena, CA 91101

Member of:

347F - Robotic Mobility

Travis Brown

Member of Technical Staff

Biography

Travis Brown is a robotic systems engineer in the Robotic Mobility Group at JPL. He holds a Ph.D. in robotics from the University of Notre Dame, where he studied planning and control of underactuated bipedal robots. Since starting at JPL in 2016, Travis has worked on a variety of projects including the Axel Rappelling Rover, Moon Diver Mission Concept, Mars 2020 Rover (Perseverance) , COLDArm mission, Steep Terrain Mobility Rover, with minor roles on several other R&D projects. He is currently Chief Engineer for the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter.

Education

• PhD Robotics, University of Notre Dame (2015)

• MS Mechanical Engineering, University of Notre Dame (2013)

• BS Mechanical Engineering, Brigham Young University (2009)

Research Interests

• Motion planning
• Locomotion
• Multibody dynamic control
• Legged Robots

Publications

2023
  1. I. Nesnas, L. Kerber, G. Sellar, T. Balint, B. Denevi, A. Parness, R. Kornfeld, M. Smith, P. McGarey, T. Brown, E. Sunada, K. Gonter, B. Hockman, P. Hayne, T. Horvath, J. Hopkins, A. Johnson, R. Wagner, Y. Cheng, A. Curtis, K. Zacny, M. Paton, K. Sherrill, "Moon Diver: Exploring a pit's exposed strata to understand lunar volcanism," Acta Astronautica, Volume 211, pp. 163-176, 28 May 2023.
  2. Arthur Bouton, William Reid, Travis Brown, Adriana Daca, Mielad Sabzehi, and Hari Nayar, "Experimental Study of Alternative Rover Configurations and Mobility Modes for Planetary Exploration," 2023 IEEE Aerospace Conference, Big Sky, MT, USA, pp. 1-13, 04 March 2023.
  3. A. Brinkman, J. Karras, D. Zhu, N. Abcouwer, T. Brown, G. Kubiak, A. Umali, L. Tse, J. Zitkus, R. Mccormick, "Leveraging Ingenuity Software and Avionics to Enable Robotic Arm Sampling for COLDArm," 2023 IEEE Aerospace Conference, Big Sky, MT, USA, pp. 1-9, 04 March 2023.
2019
  1. H. Grip, J. Lam, D. Bayard, D. Conway, G. Singh, R. Brockers, J. Delaune, L. Matthies, C. Malpica, T. Brown, A. Jain, A. San Martin, and G. Merewether, "Flight Control System for NASA's Mars Helicopter," AIAA Scitech 2019 Forum, pp. 1-20, 07 January 2019.
2018
  1. E.H., Templeton D., Kominsky T.L., Brown I.A., Nesnas, "A Novel Sensing Tether for Rovers," AIAA Aerospace Sciences Meeting, Kissimmee, Florida, 01 January 2018.
  2. G., Meirion-Griffith I., Nesnas L., Kerber R., Anderson T., Brown F., Calef J., Burdick M., Tanner, "Accessing Mars Recurring Slope Lineae: Mobility Systems Analysis," IEEE Aerospace Conference, Big Sky, Montana,, 01 January 2018.
2016
  1. T.L., Brown, J.P., Schmiedeler, "Reaction Wheel Actuation for Improving Planar Biped Walking Efficiency," IEEE Transactions on Robotics, vol. 32, no. 5, 1290-1297, 01 January 2016.
  2. T.L., Brown, J.P. Schmiedeler, "Gait Transitions and Disturbance Response for Planar Bipeds with Reaction Wheel Actuation," Proc. IEEE/RSJ Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, 01 January 2016.
2015
  1. T.L., Brown J.P., Schmiedeler, "Direct Trajectory Optimized Walking Gaits Implemented on a Planar Biped Via Virtual Constraints," Dynamic Walking, Columbus, OH, July 20-24, 01 January 2015.
2014
  1. T.L., Brown, V.P., Atluri, J.P., Schmiedeler, "A Low Cost Hybrid Drivetrain Concept Based on Compressed Air Energy Storage," Applied Energy, 134, pp. 477-489, 01 January 2014.
  2. T.L., Brown, J.P., Schmiedeler, "Energetic effects of reaction wheel actuation on underactuated biped robot walking," Proc. IEEE Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2576-2581, 01 January 2014.
2013
  1. T.L., Brown V.P., Atluri J.P. Schmiedeler, "Design of High Speed Rotary Valves for Pneumatic Applications," ASME Journal of Mechanical Design, 015001, 01 January 2013.
2011
  1. T.L., Brown T.D., Aslam J.P., Schmiedeler, "Determination of Minimum Time Rendezvous Points for Multiple Mobile Robots via Level Set Methods," Proceedings of the 2011 ASME International Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computers & Information in Engineering Conference, pp. 787-797, 01 January 2011.
2009
  1. M.A., Judd T.L., Brown M.B., Colton, "Toward Automated Haptic Modeling Using Commercial Haptic Interfaces: Surface Normal Estimation and Static Model Identification," WorldHaptics 2009: 3rd Joint EuroHaptics Conference and IEEE Symposium on Haptic Interfaces for Virtual Environments and Teleoperator Systems, pp. 434-439, 01 January 2009.