Awards for Excellence

Citation

(2003), "Awards for Excellence", Industrial Robot, Vol. 30 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/ir.2003.04930eaa.003

Awards for Excellence

Awards for Excellence

Adam JacoffElena Messina

and

John EvansIntelligent Systems Division, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, Maryland, USAare the recipients of the journal's Outstanding Paper Award for Excellence for their paper

"Performance evaluation of autonomous mobile robots"

which appeared in Industrial Robot, Vol. 29 No. 3, 2002

Adam Jacoff is a robotics research engineer in the Intelligent Systems Division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Over the past 15 years, he has designed and developed a variety of innovative robots for applications in machine vision, large scale manufacturing, and hazardous material handling. His current efforts are focused toward developing and proliferating the reference test arenas for autonomous mobile robots. These arenas are used to objectively evaluate mobile robot capabilities in an attempt to define and quantify performance metrics for autonomous mobile robots. He received his Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Maryland and his Master's degree in Computer Science from John Hopkins University.

Elena Messina is the Group Leader of the Knowledge Systems Group in the Intelligent Systems Division at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. She is also the program manager for research and engineering of intelligent systems. Her work responsibilities include knowledge representation and planning for control, establishment of performance metrics for intelligent systems, and development of software architectures, tools, and methodologies for building controllers.

Ms Messina has initiated research into the area of performance metrics for intelligent systems. She is the general chair of a series of yearly workshops, begun in 2000, on the topic of Performance Metrics for Intelligent Systems. Under her direction, a major test course for urban search and rescue robots was developed and has become the de facto international standards for evaluating urban search and rescue robots.

Prior to joining NIST, she was the manager of Geometric Modeling for the I-Deas Master Series CAD?CAE software at the Structural Dynamics Research Corporation. Ms Messina also worked at Cincinnati Milacron on their industrial robots, where she received two patents for her arc welding- related enhancements. She received a BS in Engineering Science from the University of Cincinnati.

Dr John M. Evans is known for both technical and managerial achievements in the fields of automation, CAD/CAM, and robotics. After receiving his bachelors degree from Yale and his doctorate from the University of Colorado, both in Physics, he joined the staff of the National Bureau of Standards where he started and managed a program in Automation Technology focused on standards and dynamic measurement for real time closed loop control of robots and machine tools. Dr Evans was instrumental in the reorganization within NBS that created a new Center for Mechanical Engineering and Process Technology (now the Manufacturing Engineering Laboratory) and he served as the first Deputy Director of that Center.

After NBS Dr Evans worked for a series of small companies in CAD/CAM and robotics. He was the vice president, engineering and operations, of Gerber Systems Technology, a CAD/CAM company; while he was there sales more than quadrupled over three fiscal years. Dr Evans was subsequently chairman and president of Nova Robotics, a company in the industrial robot field that developed innovative software for generative programming for small lot production in electronics and aerospace industries. He then became president and COO of Transitions Research Corporation, a company that achieved a world leadership position in applications of robotics in services as opposed to manufacturing. TRC changed its name to HelpMate Robotics Inc. in recognition of a transition from contract engineering to product manufacturing as the primary business focus of the company, and Dr Evans became the vice president of engineering.

In 1998, Dr Evans returned to the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Manufacturing Engineering Lab as chief of the intelligent systems division, one of the divisions that grew out of the Automation Technology Program.

Dr Evans left government service in 2002 and subsequently established a firm to provide consulting services in robotics and automation.

Dr Evans has over 50 publications in the fields of CAD/CAM, robotics and automation, has served as an editor for the Journal of Robots and Autonomous Systems and is now an editor of the Industrial Robot Journal, has been awarded eight patents, and has received several awards including the Department of Commerce Silver Medal. He has been a member of the IEEE Technical Committee on Service Robots, the Society of Manufacturing Engineers, Robotics International of SME, the Robot Institute of America, the Technical Committee of the Computer Automated Systems Association of SME, the International Federation of Automatic Control, EIA Committee IE-31 on Numerical control, the Numerical Control Society Standards Committee, the CAM-I Standards Committee, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Department of Commerce Numerical Control Technical Advisory Committee, the NBS Committee on Patents and Inventions, and has served as a consultant to the NRC Committee on Advanced Robotics for Air Force Operations.