About the Center for Robotics Software
The UHCL Center for Robotics Software (CRS) officially launched June 7, 2017 with a kick-off event for academia, NASA, aerospace and Oceaneering contractors and other companies involved in robotics.
The Center was conceived during consultation with key members of the NASA and local community. The Center's main purpose is to leverage the technical infrastructure that exists between NASA, academia, and industry to identify and solve challenging automation and robotics problems. The emphasis is on applications of the Robot Operating System for controlling robots.
At the kickoff, speakers included Robert O. Ambrose, division chief of NASA's Software, Robotics and Simulation Division, NASA Robotics Engineer Kimberly Hambuchen, Jacobs Oceaneering Space System's Court Edmonson, UHCL Assistant Professor of Computer Engineering Luong Nguyen and Carol Fairchild. Dr. Harman, the original founding Director and Carol Fairchild, the original Co-director of the Center, presented the Center's goals for collaboration as well as described the latest robotics activity at UHCL. To view presentations from the CRS kick-off event, visit the Center for Robotics Software YouTube channel.
Center for Robotics Software Personnel
The Center is operated by faculty members and visiting researchers from University of Houston-Clear Lake's College of Science and Engineering.
Luong Nguyen, Ph.D.
Center for Robotics Software Director
Dr. Nguyen received his Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Rice University
in Houston, Texas. Before that, he received a Master of Science in Computer Science
from University of Houston-Clear Lake, and a Master of Science and a Bachelor of Science
from the University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, both in electrical engineering.
Dr. Nguyen has over 20 years of experience in space robotics, working on the Space
Shuttle and Space Station Remote Manipulator Systems (SRMS and SSRMS) at Johnson Space
Center. He is currently the Vice Chair of the Robotics and Automation Section of the
IEEE Galveston Bay Chapter.
Dr. Nguyen led several teams of UHCL students in the NASA Swarmathon Robotics Competition (2016-2019) and the NASA Space Robotics Challenge Competition (2019-2020). His teams won several awards from both competitions.
Founder
Thomas L. Harman was the founder of the Center for Robotics Software and served as department chair of engineering and professor of computer engineering. From 1968–1972, he completed much of his doctoral research at JSC, funded in part by NASA, studying semiconductor devices flown on NASA aircraft as nuclear-particle detectors. From 1973–1977, he worked as a staff engineer at Lockheed Electronics, designing minicomputer systems for JSC's Building 49 and developing an energy-management system later commercialized by Lockheed. He also co-authored ROS Robotics by Example (2nd edition, November 2017) with Carol Fairchild, providing updated guidance on the latest version of ROS software.
