Sarah Downs Equips NASA’s Robots With Assembly Skills

This 12 months the IEEE graduate scholar member achieved that dream. For her remaining mission as a grasp’s diploma candidate in electrical engineering on the University of Tulsa, she labored on an algorithm in collaboration with NASA and the U.S. Air Force.

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

Now a Ph.D. scholar in electrical engineering at Texas A&M University in School 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 heart attack in 2015 when she was 13, was a security advisor within the oil and gas trade. Her mom stayed residence to maintain her brother, who has autism. After her father died, her mom went again to school 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 all the time anxious about cash,” Downs says. “That made me extra conscious of getting a profitable profession, in a financial sense.”

From then on, at any time when she thought of 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 be able to 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 remaining two years of highschool, she participated in an extension program at Tulsa Tech, a coaching college. She spent half her day in highschool lessons and the opposite half taking engineering programs on the vocational college.

After graduating in 2020, she accepted scholarships to attend the College of Tulsa. She started her freshman 12 months at UTulsa not figuring out whether or not she wished 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 year capstone project, she and two of her classmates designed a lunar lander exhibit for the Tulsa Air and Space 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 laptop displays. Utilizing a recreation controller, museum guests can discover the digital floor of every one. The exhibit remains to be on show.

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

Each extra and easier 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 12 months within the college’s Institute for Robotics and Autonomy, then newly launched. Its major focus is growing robots to help individuals who have mobility challenges.

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

Earlier than the beginning of her sophomore 12 months 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 area, cameras would possibly malfunction or encounter delays.

Fairly 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 pressure 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 think about the arm’s response torques on the satellite tv for pc to keep away from flinging it into area,” 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 pressure of the robotic’s motions.

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

“I believe robots are each extra and likewise easier than individuals suppose,” she says. “Actually, all that you must 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 completely different grippers and levels of freedom, “basically, 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, remains to be extremely complicated for robots.”

Downs is finishing her doctoral thesis within the Robotic Space Simulator mission at Texas A&M’s Robotics and Automation Design (RAD) Lab, which makes a speciality of growing 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 ready to function affiliate director of the college’s House Institute, because of open this 12 months in Houston. The analysis facility is being constructed subsequent to the Johnson Space Center.

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

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

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 individual.

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

They included lunch-and-learn periods and dinners that linked 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 enhance the department’s govt board membership from roughly 5 college students to 25 in 2023. The identical 12 months, her soldering workshop attracted about 80 college students.

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

IEEE is a superb 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 immediately’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 student members.

“Numerous them have discovered jobs” due to IEEE, she says.