NASA Ames, Mountain View, California

United States

Research Areas

Automation, Control Design & Engineering, Machine Intelligence, Robot Programming, Robots

Biography

Michael Sims was born on June 3rd, 1949 in Memphis Tennessee. He completed his undergraduate and graduate education at Rutgers University studying physics, mathematics, and computer science. In 1990, he received his Ph.D. in Mathematics/Computer Science/Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning. From 1987 to 2013, he worked at NASA Ames Research Center where he was the Principal Research Scientist. He also worked on the Pathfinder and MER missions at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) from 1997 to 2015. In 2013 Sims joined Moon Express, where he served as Vice President for Software and Chief Robotics Officer until May 2015. In 2015, he became the Senior Research Scientist for the Mars Institute. Sims’ research interests focus on space exploration and expansion robotics.

Interview Synopsis

In this interview, Michael Sims discusses his career and work in space robotics, focusing on artificial intelligence and human-robot interaction. Describing his research and collaborations, he outlines the applications and challenges of his work, such as TROV and MER. Additionally he comments on the evolution of his research work and of robotics as a whole, and its future potential and applications.