Re: Lockheed-Martin Autonomous Systems Group Director Position:
This letter is intended to highlight and expand upon certain areas of my resume which I believe are of particular relevance to the above position. I believe Autonomous Systems as a technology area consists of several inter-related disciplines including: 1) Sensing and extracting information from the sensors in order to understand the environment and current situation, 2) Planning and Updating, and 3) Execution including controls and receiving feedback from both internal sensors and the sensing system. In my career I have focused primarily on the first area: Sensing and extraction of information to support machine understanding and human supervision.
In the particular area of robotics and autonomous systems in general and ground robotics in particular, I have the following relevant experience. I worked extensively with our ground vehicle robotics organization based in Huntsville developing vision systems for robotic ground vehicles. This effort included development of a distributed aperture, 360 degree vision system together with a low latency, wireless communication link to allow a remote user to either directly drive a remote vehicle, or to provide supervision of a vehicle following a pre-planned route. This effort culminated in remotely driving a Chevrolet Tahoe at Redstone Arsenal and also operating 2 unmanned Tahoes driving around the Huntsville speedway. An additional aspect of the second demonstration was the implementation of an automatic perimeter surveillance function in which the vision system could detect and provide warning of a) moving objects, b) stationary personnel, and c) stationary vehicles. These efforts are described in my SPIE paper titled “Vision Systems for Manned & Robotic Ground Vehicles.”
I have additional autonomous systems experience related to air vehicles, including development and demonstration of automatic “See and Avoid” systems and optical based Automated Aerial Refueling (AAR) systems operating between 2 unmanned air vehicles. In addition to the sensing and processor technology, this work included a significant focus on reliability and verification of the sensor results. I also note that the boundary between manned and unmanned systems can be ambiguous: sensing and exploitation algorithms, for example to detect obstacles in order to warn a human operator, can also be used as input to control systems for fully autonomous systems.
My sensor experience includes extensive work with multi-sensor, multi-spectral vision systems including visible, infra-red, millimeter wave, and 3D lidar systems, as well as development of algorithms and processing to exploit the sensor data. For various reasons, both security related and competition sensitive, I cannot provide many of the details, in particular regarding the lidar systems except to note that lidar is a key sensor for many autonomous systems.
I would also like to highlight my activities related to business capture and growth. While with SVS, Inc. (purchased by Boeing in 2000), I helped grow the company from 15 to 140 people (and eventually 340 following the purchase). This included writing the business plan for an automated airborne inspection system which helped grow the company from about 20 to 50 personnel. Currently I am in charge of Contract Research and Development (CRAD) capture for my organization. In the last year we achieved > 60% win rate. Both as a Boeing employee and as co-chair of an SPIE conference, I interact regularly with government personnel in the Army, Air Force, Navy, and at DARPA. These contacts have been more focused on sensors and vision systems, but provide a strong set of initial contacts and demonstrate my ability to interface with US government personnel.
One final note which combines sensor and exploitation with business development, may be of interest. Prior to joining SVS, Inc. I developed a video-grammetry software capability to analyze video sequences and extract Time, Space, Position Information (TSPI) data. With SVS, Inc. we matured this into the Visual Fusion software product which is sold world wide for video based motion analysis. As part of that effort I not only matured the software to a product including development of manuals, tutorials, and marketing literature, but developed a network of distributors. (And yes, Lockheed purchased a copy some years ago at Edwards AFB to support weapons separation analysis). The relevance for the current position is my ability to develop state of the art algorithms, implement them in software usable by high school educated personnel to PhD researchers, and market the product internationally.
I believe the above experience demonstrates understanding of and experience: 1) In robotics and autonomous systems, in particular in the sensing and information extraction areas, 2) The ability to mature technology from concept to routinely used product including all aspects of sales and support, 3) The ability to grow an organization and to comfortably interface with key government personnel.
John N. Sanders-Reed1505-450-1851