Patrick Beeson

Doctoral candidate in the Department of Computer Sciences at The University of Texas at Austin.

My plans to graduate in August 2007 have been postponed while I work with Peter Stone and Austin Robot Technology on the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge. (We have just qualified for the national semi-final event.) I still plan to graduate before August 2008.

My general areas of interest are Artificial Intelligence, Mobile Robotics, and Cognitive Science. More specifically, I am investigating reliable ways for mobile robots to detect, classify, and recognize places in the world. Generating and maintaining symbolic, discrete representations of large environments enhances robot control, planning, and communication. This work, along with related research in human-robot interaction (HRI), is being evaluated on an Intelligent Wheelchair platform.

http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/pbeeson/

Jon Brogdon

Jon has over 14 years of experience in embedded systems programming for medical devices and communications systems.

Jon is a Senior Software Engineer at Cisco Systems in Austin working on Ethernet switches for service provider applications. Jon has also worked on DSL firmware, network processor software and DSP firmware at Cisco, Agere, and Motorola. After graduating in 1992 with a BSEE from the University of Houston, Jon worked as a Software Engineer at Intermedics in Angleton, Texas, where he developed software for an implantable pacemaker programmer. Jon has also taught C/C++, advanced programming and electronics at the junior college level. While in college, he also worked as a programmer in the Computational Neuroscience Department at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, writing software to process measurements from biological neural networks.

Jon designed and developed software for the Pilot component of the Austin Robot Technology entry for the DARPA Grand Challenge NQE in October 2005.

Art Martin-de-Nicolas

Over 27 years experience in microprocessor high performance programming.

Art joined IBM in 1983 with degrees in electrical engineering and computer science from Rice University. At the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center he developed an emulator of the IBM PC using dynamic translation and then led the team in Austin that turned it into a product for IBM workstations, then defined PowerPC instructions to improve the performance of X86 emulation. Art has 10 years experience writing x86 micro-code for the VIA family of microprocessors. Art now works at Intel designing next generation processors. Thirteen of Art's inventions have been granted US patents.

Art is President of Austin Robot Technology, which he founded with his brothers in 2004 to compete in the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge; his role was alternate team leader. He secured funding, recruited team members, selected the vehicle, selected actuators for steering and braking, helped design the E-stop system, helped select the vision sensors, and wrote the visualization tool.

Since the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge Art has been implementing an innovative vision system running on advanced graphics processors (GPUs).

Art was team leader during 2006 and early 2007 as the team prepared to participate in the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge. He helped establish the partnership with The University of Texas at Austin and select the enhanced sensors and inertial navigation system required for the Urban Challenge.

Jorge Martin-de-Nicolas

Over 20 years experience in engineering and computer science.

Jorge graduated from Rice University with a Masters in Computer Science and a Masters in Civil Engineering. After graduation he worked in California for an engineering company in San Francisco in many diverse projects. Some projects were done for the David Taylor Research Center (a research branch of the US Navy) and involved a motion simulator predicting the motion of an underwater structure at varying ocean depths and surface wave conditions, and a simulator predicting tension in a fiber optic cable during deployment given varying ocean depth and deployment vessel speed. Another project done for the California Department of Transportation consisted in the nonlinear analysis of highway superstructures which survived the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. Other projects in Jorge's career took him to Silicon Valley where he developed software for database applications and multi-threaded distributed systems, and Austin, Texas, where he helped develop next-generation Voice Over IP telephony applications. Jorge currently works at Anue Systems in Austin, developing embedded software for network emulation equipment.

Jorge was the Team Leader for Austin Robot Technology's 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge entry. A busy professional life (and a busy J/24 racing schedule :-) prevented Jorge from taking on the full team leadership position for 2007.

Juan Martin-de-Nicolas

Over 22 years experience working with machinery and mechanical systems.

Juan graduated Magna Cum Laude from ASU in Business Administration with a concentration in Computer Information Systems and Accounting. Juan worked in the textile machinery industry, buying and selling equipment all over the world. In the 90's Juan and his brother Jorge created an interactive online database for machinery. Juan's travels have taken him to China, Australia, Europe and South America.

Juan has pretty much single-handedly done all the mechanical work necessary to transform an ordinary Isuzu VehiCROSS into a one-of-a-kind robotic vehicle... from removing the steering column and designing a custom chain and sprocket mechanism to attach our Quicksilver steering motor, to mounting our 4 kilowatt generator in the engine compartment and re-routing the engine coolant hoses to allow clearance for a custom belt tensioner needed to drive the generator from the main engine's crankshaft... Juan's welds never break :-) and at least two other teams from the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge can bear witness to this, since Juan unselfishly helped them when their vehicles broke down during the NQE or when their vehicles were in need of custom fabrication.

Donald W. McCauley

Over 20 years experience designing microprocessors and computer systems with IBM and Intel.

Don received a BSEE degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1976. Completed one year of graduate study prior to starting work with IBM in upstate New York in 1977. Moved to Austin, Texas in 1993. Joined Intel in 1999. Don has 11 patents issued or pending. Currently a researcher at Intel’s Microprocessor Technology Lab in Austin, Texas. His contributions include the design of the hardware systems in the vehicle, including the computer servers, hardware interfaces to sensors, as well as software for the stereoscopic vision system.

Jack O'Quin

Jack O’Quin received a B.A. in computer science from the University of Texas at Austin.

He joined IBM in 1977, doing operating system development, including AIX, the IBM version of Unix, beginning in 1983. In 1985 he joined a project at the T.J. Watson Research Center working on the new microprocessor architecture which later became PowerPC. In 1986 he returned to Austin as lead architect of AIX version 3 for the RISC System/6000, IBM’s first product based on the new POWER architecture.

He retired from IBM in 1996. Since then, he has developed open source audio programs for Linux, including the award-winning JACK Audio Connection Kit, which combines low-latency audio applications in a realtime-safe framework. That effort includes helping Linux kernel developers improve the realtime responsiveness of the 2.6 kernel series. In 2004 he joined Austin Robot Technology, developing software for our 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge entry.

His contributions include: selecting and deploying programming tools for build and change control; packaging stable versions of all external software dependencies, including the Linux operating system; improvements in on-board serial device error handling; PID control for braking and throttle to achieve requested vehicle speeds; and much vehicle integration testing and debugging.

Stephen Straus

Stephen Straus joined Austin Ventures in 1996 as a Kauffman Fellow and recently left to pursue an entrepreneurial opportunity. Prior to joining Austin Ventures, Stephen was Founder and CEO of The Solutions Group, a software and services firm in Washington, DC, from 1987 until its acquisition in 1993. Stephen graduated cum laude from Colgate University and received his MBA from Harvard Business School.

Professor Peter Stone

Professor Peter Stone is an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow and Professor in the Department of Computer Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin. He received his Ph.D. in 1998 and his M.S. in 1995 from Carnegie Mellon University, both in Computer Science. He received his B.S. in Mathematics from the University of Chicago in 1993. From 1999 to 2002 he was a Senior Technical Staff Member in the Artificial Intelligence Principles Research Department at AT&T; Labs - Research.

Prof. Stone is Director of the Learning Agents research group at The University of Texas Computer Science Artificial Intelligence Department. The aim is to understand how we can best create complete intelligent agents. Professor Stone considers both adaptation and interaction to be essential capabilities of such agents. Thus, his research focuses mainly on machine learning, multiagent systems, and robotics. Application domains include robot soccer, autonomous bidding agents, traffic management, and autonomic computing.

Prof. Stone, brings extensive expertise on high-level robotics and AI control algorithms as well as extensive experience deploying successful software in multi-agent competition scenarios. Prof. Stone is fully committed to a close partnership with ART on this project, including devoting his own time, and contributing dedicated post-doc and graduate student effort towards the goal of winning the Urban Challenge.

Prof. Stone's research interests include planning and machine learning, particularly in multi-agent systems. His doctoral thesis research contributed a flexible multi-agent team structure and multi-agent machine learning techniques for teams operating in real-time noisy environments in the presence of both teammates and adversaries. His long-term research goal is to create complete, robust, autonomous agents that can learn to interact with other intelligent agents in a wide range of complex, dynamic environments.

Professor Stone is the recipient of IJCAI's 2007 Computer and Thought Award  and taught a course in the Spring of 2007 "Autonomous Vehicles: Driving in Traffic."

David Tuttle

Dave joined IBM in 1982 with BS and MEng degrees with Highest Honors from the University of Louisville. After writing SDLC communications diagnostic code and designing an in-situ burn-in system he moved to the CPU design group. There he designed the logic on the POWER1 DCU chip, completed its design validation, and successfully debugged & booted the DCU chip in the lab. After POWER1 was finished, Dave completed his MBA at UT-Austin. Returning to IBM, he led teams which designed the PowerPC 601 (with Apple & Motorola), FibreChannel adapters/switches, the POWER2-SC (used in the 1997 chess playing Supercomputer which beat Garry Kasparov), POWER3, POWER3+, POWER3-SOI microprocessors, and IBM Systems.

In 2000 he was recruited by Sun Microsystems to build an Austin CPU design center from scratch. His team designed portions of the 32-thread Niagara1 design and recently designed the entire 64-thread CPU core on the Niagara2 microprocessor.

Dave currently is a management consultant and is enjoying exploring, advising, and collaborating on multiple ventures with the University of Texas, the Austin Chamber of Commerce, and others in the Austin technical and business community.

Laura P. Wright

Laura is Vice President at BlabberMouth PR, Texas' foremost public relations firm. Laura has been helping corporate clients reach their audiences for two decades, garnering more than 30 national, regional and statewide awards in the process. Her clients have included Fortune 500 companies in a variety of industries, including the science and technology, healthcare, finance, legal, industrial and retail sectors.

Laura’s extensive work in biotechnology led her to become the lead writer of the 2002 Council on Science and Biotechnology Development report to Texas Governor Rick Perry, as well as the Texas Healthcare and Bioscience Institute’s 21st Century Life Science Roadmap. Her technology experience is reflected in marketing, public affairs and public relations materials for dozens of leading-edge companies including 3M, Novell, EDS and Tivoli.

As principal for Public Strategies, Inc. from 1994 until 2000, Laura was responsible for public advocacy campaigns for Southwestern Bell's five-state region as well as Pacific Bell. She also was responsible for advocacy and mobilization campaigns for electric industry deregulation, home equity reform and a variety of consumer protection, healthcare and education issues. Her work was remarkably successful and provided the foundation for legislation such as the Texas Telecommunications Act of 1995 and passage of Texas home equity reform.