Hans Thomas Email & Phone Number

Houston, Texas, Us

Technical Program Management for Unmanned Underwater Vehicle development and operations. Primary areas of work include vehicle software (embedded targets as well as topside/shoreside), aided inertial navigation development using Doppler, LBL & USBL, Ali-Ion battery development, vehicle integration and testing. Participated in development of various AUVs, including long-range AUV for arctic exploration, physical oceanographic AUV for upper water column survey, and multibeam AUV for geophysical mapping. Participated in science and engineering development cruises.

Moffett Field, California, Us

Technical leadership of robotics and computer vision research projects sponsored by NASA Advance Technology programs. Specific duties included proposal development, reporting, program advocacy at NASA headquarters; planning & scheduling of research and development tasks. Specific activities included project manager for spacecraft IVA micro-robot; software & hardware development for serpentine robot for planetary surface locomotion. Developed integrated computer vision & navigation software for planetary rover surface navigation. Development of embedded flight software for Deep Space One technology demonstrator mission. Consulting engineer with Carnegie Mellon University Field Robotics Center on Nomad lunar rover prototype. Electronics, software design, and technical leadership for joint NASA/McDonnel Douglass/Russian team that integrated a Russian Marsokhod rover for field tests in Kilauea, HI and Flagstaff, AZ. Software and hardware engineering on other robotics projects, including Ames TROV underwater robot.

Collaborated with other researchers in developing novel real-time stereo correlator. Integrated various visual tracking/active vision systems for fixed manipulator and mobile robot control, including AUV control. Performed hardware design for motor control. Led engineering team on commercial project to develop outdoor mobile robots. Other duties included UNIX system administration and business development (proposal writing, hiring, project management).

Developed parallel implementations of multi-baseline stereo algorithm and sensor-based cross-country navigation system. Implemented vision algorithms on various SIMD and MIMD parallel processing architectures. Worked with faculty and graduate student researchers on various projects, including high fidelity optical depth measurement, integrating laser rangefinder and color camera imagery, mobile robot simulator development, and gait planning for legged robots.