Sarah Downs Equips NASA’s Robots With Meeting Abilities

This yr the IEEE graduate scholar member achieved that dream. For her last mission as a grasp’s diploma candidate in electrical engineering on the College of Tulsa, she labored on an algorithm in collaboration with NASA and the U.S. Air Power.

The algorithm she developed permits a robotic assembling satellites in house to insert an antenna into the right spot, addressing robotics’s traditional peg-in-hole downside of inserting an object into its corresponding gap.

Now a Ph.D. scholar in electrical engineering at Texas A&M College in Faculty Station, Downs is continuous her analysis on satellite tv for pc meeting and manipulation “however on a a lot bigger scale,” she says.

Following a childhood ardour

Downs grew up within the Tulsa space. Her father, who died from a coronary heart assault in 2015 when she was 13, was a security advisor within the oil and fuel trade. Her mom stayed residence to deal with her brother, who has autism. After her father died, her mom went again to varsity to earn a bachelor’s diploma in enterprise so she might assist the household.

“We didn’t have a lot revenue, and my mother was at all times anxious about cash,” Downs says. “That made me extra conscious of getting a profitable profession, in a financial sense.”

From then on, every time she thought-about her future profession, having a good wage to assist the household was excessive on her record.

By pursuing a profession in robotics, she says, she will observe her ardour whereas acquiring monetary safety.

In highschool, Downs joined the First robotics membership, the place she discovered herself drawn to {the electrical} elements used within the machines she and her classmates constructed.

Throughout her last two years of highschool, she participated in an extension program at Tulsa Tech, a coaching faculty. She spent half her day in highschool lessons and the opposite half taking engineering programs on the vocational faculty.

After graduating in 2020, she accepted scholarships to attend the College of Tulsa. She started her freshman yr at UTulsa not realizing whether or not she needed to main in electrical or mechanical engineering, she says, including that her love of working with small programs helped her select EE.

For her senior yr capstone mission, she and two of her classmates designed a lunar lander exhibit for the Tulsa Air and House Museum. They created an interactive recreation that simulates missions on lunar and martian surfaces. 4 celestial our bodies—the moon, Venus, Mars, and Titan—are listed throughout three pc displays. Utilizing a recreation controller, museum guests can discover the digital floor of every one. The exhibit continues to be on show.

Downs earned her bachelor’s diploma in electrical engineering in 2024 and continued her schooling on the college’s EE grasp’s diploma program.

Each extra and simpler than individuals suppose

When Downs started her graduate research, she was purported to be a part of a NASA robotics mission for 2 years. However when a delay in authorities funding postponed the mission’s begin, she as a substitute spent her first yr within the faculty’s Institute for Robotics and Autonomy, then newly launched. Its foremost focus is creating robots to help individuals who have mobility challenges.

Impressed by her grandmother, who was wheelchair-bound as a result of extreme arthritis, Downs developed a robotic arm that helps older individuals and wheelchair customers stay independently. The arm was in a position to determine and place objects within the acceptable places inside the house, reminiscent of unloading sure groceries from a purchasing bag and inserting them on a shelf or in separate containers.

Earlier than the beginning of her sophomore yr in 2025, the NASA mission lastly secured authorities funding. She developed a robotic that achieves the peg-in-hole activity with out utilizing any imaginative and prescient programs. Usually, cameras assist information robots’ satellite-assembly work. However within the harsh, distant atmosphere of outer house, cameras would possibly malfunction or encounter delays.

Relatively than utilizing cameras, Downs’s robotic arm deploys a force-based insertion course of to sense place and orientation of objects within the arm’s atmosphere. The robotic loosely grips an antenna and, with a torque sensor on its gripper, “feels” the power suggestions of the place the satellite tv for pc and antenna are in relation to one another. The robotic then guides the antenna meeting right into a goal opening on its satellite tv for pc and maintains the place throughout adhesion.

Including to the complexity, the robotic performs its activity in zero gravity.

“With out gravity, you now have to contemplate the arm’s response torques on the satellite tv for pc to keep away from flinging it into house,” Downs says. Any movement from the arm throughout the insertion course of, particularly from elevated forces, might trigger the satellite tv for pc to proceed motion in that course.

To fight that, Downs is performing calculations for the mission to direct focused reverse thrusts and counter the power of the robotic’s motions.

Her graduate mission captures the easy but complicated nature of robotics that she finds fascinating, she says.

“I feel robots are each extra and likewise simpler than individuals suppose,” she says. “Actually, all it’s essential to begin programming a robotic is its Denavit-Hartenberg parameters, and you are able to do lots with that,” she says, referencing the 4 values used to explain the place and orientation of a robotic arm and manipulators. Even with totally different grippers and levels of freedom, “essentially, all robotic manipulators begin there,” she says.

“However,” she provides, “we’re nonetheless studying a lot about how robots work together with their atmosphere. Even one thing easy to us, like manipulating a pen, continues to be extremely complicated for robots.”

Downs is finishing her doctoral thesis within the Robotic House Simulator mission at Texas A&M’s Robotics and Automation Design (RAD) Lab, which makes a speciality of creating machines that may survive in excessive environments. It collaborates with NASA.

Her thesis advisor is Robert Ambrose, a NASA veteran who launched the RAD Lab in 2022. The IEEE member is about to function affiliate director of the college’s House Institute, as a result of open this yr in Houston. The analysis facility is being constructed subsequent to the Johnson House Heart.

After incomes her Ph.D., Downs says, she hopes to sooner or later work for NASA, creating rovers that gather samples from Mars or robotic arms that carry out duties on house stations.

To be taught extra about robots, try IEEE Spectrum’s information.

Getting out of the engineering bubble

Downs joined IEEE in 2020 as a freshman at UTulsa to get extra concerned in electrical engineering occasions on campus. On the time, the COVID-19 pandemic stored golf equipment and organizations from assembly in particular person.

She was energetic in her faculty’s IEEE scholar department and was elected as its 2022–2024 president. Underneath her management, the department went from having a couple of occasions to internet hosting one each two weeks.

They included lunch-and-learn classes and dinners that related college students with skilled engineers and the college’s alumni. Downs additionally organized hands-on workshops on soldering, 3D printing, CAD modeling, and résumé-building.

Her efforts helped improve the department’s govt board membership from roughly 5 college students to 25 in 2023. The identical yr, her soldering workshop attracted about 80 college students.

She says she loved working with IEEE, particularly “partaking with alumni and studying from engineers.”

IEEE is a good useful resource for networking alternatives, she says, noting that “throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, engineering college students stayed of their bubbles.” IEEE occasions helped the scholars make connections that might serve them effectively, she says.

“Networking is essential, particularly in at the moment’s powerful job market,” she says. “It’s lots about who and the way individuals observe your work ethic.”

Downs, who now serves as an IEEE graduate advisor for UTulsa’s scholar department, says she has seen firsthand how the college’s scholar department community has benefited its scholar members.

“A number of them have discovered jobs” due to IEEE, she says.