Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - September/October 2015 - (Page 38)

exploring career options Robotics Electrical Engineer Jaakko Karras NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory Jaakko Karras received a bachelor's degree in engineering from Harvey Mudd College in 2010 and a master's degree in electrical engineering from UC Berkeley in 2013. Karras joined the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 2014 as an engineer in the Robotic Actuation and Sensing Group. As he explains, he can trace his interest in robotics back to the LEGOs he played with as a child. How did you become interested in robotics? I've always enjoyed building and creating things. I spent endless hours playing with LEGOs as a kid. When I was in high school, I started doing FIRST Robotics. I'd been interested in engineering and I'd done a fair amount of programming prior to that, but it wasn't until I got the opportunity to actually build robots with my teammates that it dawned on me that it was something I wanted to do professionally. One of the great things about FIRST is that you actually build this thing from next to nothing in six weeks. Seeing everything come together-the mechanics, the electronics, the software-was really satisfying. FIRST was like the grownup kids' version of LEGOs, and that was really fun. Did you pursue your undergraduate degree with the goal of getting a job in robotics? When I began applying to college, I was confident that I wanted to do some form of engineering, but I didn't know if I wanted to do software, electrical, or mechanical. I ended up in a small general engineering program at Harvey Mudd College. It was great because I had the opportunity to try out different areas within the discipline and figure out what I wanted to do. Interestingly, I realized that I really enjoyed all of them. That's what brought me to robotics, which is a very interdisciplinary field. 38 imagine Interview by Amy Entwisle In grad school, I focused on developing tactile sensing for palm-sized legged robots. I was a graduate research assistant in UC Berkeley's Biomimetic Millisystems Lab, and then a robotics intern at HRL Laboratories, before coming to work at NASA JPL. What does your job today entail? I work on developing new technologies with the goal of integrating them into NASA missions. One current project involves very small climbing robots. These tiny, wheeled robots fit in the palm of your hand. Because of their small size and low mass, they can climb things like walls, vertical trusses, and columnar structures. We're trying to combine different adhesion technologies to enable them to climb all kinds of surfaces, on Earth as well as in space, with applications from surveillance and searchand-rescue operations to space exploration and reconnaissance. One adhesion technology is a synthetic substance that mimics the properties of geckos' feet, which have tiny hairs that interact with the surfaces they climb on. This allows their feet to stick to things, which is helpful for climbing very smooth surfaces. Electrostatic adhesion, another adhesion technology, uses a high voltage to generate an electric field. When you bring that close to a surface, the surface develops a symmetric charge that produces an attraction. It's like when you rub a balloon on your hair and stick it to the wall. A robot that's trying to climb a vertical surface using these different adhesion modalities experiences variable loading on the wheels because of such dynamics as wall reaction forces, robot limb trajectories, and surface interactions. Sometimes the wheels will stick to the wall really well, and sometimes they won't. One way to overcome this variable loading is to vary the voltage that the robot is applying to the motors. For a human operator trying to make that adjustment from some distance, it's difficult to see the load that the robot is experiencing. But if you have electronics on board that can sense the load and then quickly adjust, you can climb a lot more reliably and smoothly. I work on these controls. Sept/Oct 2015

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - September/October 2015

Circuit Training Electrical Engineering at CTY
Turning Brainwaves into Action Meet ARTIE, the robot activated by thoughts
Robotics in the Real World How robots are helping us explore space, overcome disability, and so much more
My First FIRST The climbing robot that taught me to aim high
Adventures in Botball
So Much Fun, It’s Inhuman Destroying the competition in combat robotics
Born to Build The making of an engineer
The Engineering Summer Academy at Penn Three weeks that launched my future
Music in the Woods Six weeks at Tanglewood
Big Picture
In My Own Words Daniel H. Wilson, author of Robopocalypse and Robogenesis
Selected Opportunities and Resources
Off the Shelf Review of Obert Sky’s Leven Thumps and the Gateway to Foo
Word Wise
Exploring Career Options Interview with NASA robotics engineer Jaakko Karras
One Step Ahead Be fearless
Planning Ahead for College Express lessons in financial aid
Students Review Dartmouth College
Creative Minds Imagine Poetry contest winners
Mark Your Calendar
Knossos Games

Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - September/October 2015