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Name: Kimberly Hambuchen
Job Title: Aeronautics Engineer
Education: Bachelor of Engineering, Master of Science, Ph.D., Vanderbilt University
NASA Center: Johnson Space Center
Hometown: I live in Houston, Texas. I grew up in Conway, Ark.
Hobby: Making jewelry, lying on the beach, renovating my house
Tell us about the project that you are working on now.
What attracted you to a career in robotics?
What do you consider to be the highlight of your career?
What prepared you for your job?
Are you involved in any student robotics projects as a mentor or advisor? If so, please tell us about it.
What advice would you give to students interested in a career in robotics?
Tell us about the project that you are working on now.
I currently develop software applications and tools for supervising remote robots over lunar-like time delays. My main project is the Human-Robot Systems project that is part of the Exploration Technology and Development Program. I work with engineering colleagues who design, build and operate human-assistant robotics here at Johnson Space Center, and with colleagues at Ames Research Center and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory who build other types of robots. We are constantly trying to find novel and innovative methods for supervising these robots from Earth while they are on the moon. Unlike the large time delay between data transmission for the Mars Exploration Rovers, communication with robots on the moon will be short, in the range of 5-20 seconds, round trip. We think this gives us a unique opportunity to interact with the robots in near real-time, and the software I write provides us with tools to do so.
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What attracted you to a career in robotics?
My college majors were biomedical engineering and electrical and computer engineering. I was interested in image processing on both sides, which led me to take a computer vision class. It was in this class that I learned about robotics and how computer vision would allow robots to "see," which in turn could allow them to learn. I became involved in my university's humanoid robotics lab through an independent study and decided to remain with robotics during my graduate school years.
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What do you consider to be the highlight of your career?
The highlight of my career so far has been successfully supervising three types of robots (each developed at different NASA centers) remotely. The robots were in Moses Lake, Wash., and I was in Houston overseeing operations. We purposefully injected a 10-second round-trip delay in our communication stream. I performed many activities with the robots, including driving, docking to power recharge systems, stationing one robot onto another and managing camera systems to increase my efficiency.
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What prepared you for your job?
I feel that I'm never fully prepared for my job because I learn new things every day that make me better at what I do. However, my engineering background was crucial to the career I've chosen. Problem solving is what robotics engineers do every day. While my undergraduate work certainly gave me some engineering experience, it was the graduate work that gave me the most preparation for my career.
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Are you involved in any student robotics projects as a mentor or advisor? If so, please tell us about it.
Our group mentors many robotics competition teams, the largest of which is the FIRST robotics team - the Robonauts. (FIRST stands for "For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology.") While I personally have not been involved in much of the team activities (I volunteer for the regional championships), many of our engineers work with the team. Many of the FIRST team students go on to co-op at JSC and some eventually end up in our group as full-time employees.
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What advice would you give to students interested in a career in robotics?
I would suggest to students interested in robotics to explore many different areas of academics. While math, science and engineering are crucial to developing robots, unexpected areas can broaden one's understanding of how robots should and can function. As a student, I took courses in psychology and cognitive science to better understand how the human brain functions. This helped me develop software that allows robots to think and perceive, which helps to create an autonomous robot. Don't limit yourself to just mechanical or electrical engineering, because robotics is enhanced by so much more.
