Systems, Man & Cybernetics - July 2015 - 63

SMC Innovators

M.E. El-Hawary

r. Edwa rd T u n st el ( F igure 1) is a senior roboticist
in the Research and Exploratory Development Department of
the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics
Laboratory (APL), Laurel, Maryland.
He also served as the space robotics and autonomous control lead in
its Space Department. He leads and
defines the technical direction of robotics technology development and
autonomous control capabilities for
national security and space applications. He joined APL in 2007 after
18 years at the NASA Jet Propulsion
Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, where he was a senior robotics engineer and group leader of its
Advanced Robotic Controls Group.
Dr. Tunstel was born and raised in
New York City. He attended Howard
University in Washington, D.C., where
he earned his B.S. and M.E. degrees
in mechanical engineering, with a
concentration in robotics. In 1989,
he was recruited by JPL to perform
research and technology development activities on NASA planetary
rover projects to enable future robotic space science missions (Figure 2).
He served in this capacity for several
years before being awarded a JPL
Fellowship to pursue doctoral studies. As a JPL fellow, he earned his
Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering
from the University of New Mexico
in 1996.
He develops autonomous control
and navigation algorithms, software,
and systems in the context of robotics research and real-world missions.
Dr. Tunstel maintains expertise in
the areas of robotics and intelligent
computer-based systems, with current research interests in mobile
robot navigation, autonomous conDigital Object Identifier 10.1109/MSMC.2015.2483066
Date of publication: 4 March 2016

Tunstel Defining
Robotic Technology
Development at APL

Figure 1. Dr. Edward tunstel.

performance assessment, planning,
and operations of the Spirit and
Opportunity rovers during their first
four years on the surface of Mars. He
is now engaged in modular open systems development efforts for the nextgeneration robotic systems designed
for explosive ordnance disposal
as well as robotics and autonomy
research for enabling human-robot
collaborative teams.
Dr. Tunstel is a Fellow of the
IEEE and serves on the IEEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Society (SMCS) Board of Governors
(BoG). He recently served as the
SMCS vice president for systems
science and engineering and as the
vice president for conferences and
meetings. He is also a member of
the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE)-Professionals and the
American Institute of Aeronautics

trol, cooperative robotics, robotic systems engineering, and applications
of soft computing to autonomous
systems. He has nearly 30 years of
research and applications experience
in these areas and has authored over
140 journal papers, book
chapters, and conference
publications. He has also
coedited four books.
A h a l l m a rk of h i s
career was his work on
the NASA Mars Exploration Rovers mission
as both a flight systems
engineer responsible for
autonomous rover navigation and as rover engineering team lead for
the mobility and robotic
arm subsystems, which Figure 2. Dr. tunstel with a naSa planetary
involved him in the daily rover and lander prototype.
Ju ly 2015

IEEE SyStEmS, man, & CybErnEtICS magazInE

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Systems, Man & Cybernetics - July 2015