Mihail Pivtoraiko is with the Advanced Robotic Controls group at JPL. He is one of the engineers of the multi-institutional robotic software architecture (CLARAty), as well as a collaborator on robotics research tasks. Mihail joined JPL in June 2005, and at once began his involvement with robotics research at the Lab.
Mihail completed his M.S. degree at Carnegie Mellon University in 2005. At CMU, he participated in several large mobile robotics projects sponsored by DARPA, in particular PerceptOR (Perception for Off-Road robots) and LAGR (Learning Applied to Ground Robots). His roles included system engineering for the navigation system, research and development of constrained motion planning components for rough terrain and complex natural environments, and culminated in leading the task of developing the navigation system for LAGR robots. He managed the successful completion of the task on a short timeline. Toward the completion of his degree, Mihail was directly involved in a Mars Technology Program research task. As a part of a small group, Mihail contributed to the research, assisted with the task organization, and participated in the regular management reviews.
Mihail received a B.S. degree from Portland State University (Portland, Oregon), where he graduated summa cum laude in 2003. He received a dual degree in Computer Engineering and Physics, and a minor in French. In his education career, Mihail has received a variety of awards, including H. Chik M. Erzurumlu and Diversity Achievement Scholarships, Intel Scholar award, and the National Science Foundation Fellowship Honorable Mention. Mihail was also actively involved in working in the industry, including the Intel Corp., Intel Research, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (Greenbelt, MD), and the National Robotics Engineering Consortium (Pittsburgh, PA). At Portland State, Mihail was involved in the Intelligent Robotics Laboratory. He is a member of Eta Kappa Nu and Tau Beta Pi national honor societies, and the IEEE.
Mihail's areas of research interest primarily include motion planning, modeling and system identification, and state estimation. Click here to view my school webpage.
M.S. in Robotics, Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, 2005.
Research Area: Mobile off-road robotics, constrained motion planning.
B.S. in Computer Engineering and Physics, minor in French, Portland State University, 2003.
Research Area: Computer vision on embedded systems with limited resources.
Robotics Software Engineer
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA (June 2005 - current)
I am interested in improving the performance and reliability of off-road mobile robots. I research the system aspects of creating a high mobility autonomous vehicle, especially the perception, planning, and control software. In this work, I hope to advance the state of the art in off-road motion planning and system integration to make autonomous navigation in unknown terrain feasible for vehicles with limited computation features and stringent power requirements. Among various applications of this research, I am most interested in planetary exploration.