Tom Collins

Biography

Tom Collins currently has shared appointments with the Georgia Tech Research Institute and the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He received a Bachelor’s degree in ME in 1980, an MSEE in 1982, and a Ph.D. in EE in 1994, all from Georgia Tech. His research interests include robotics, digital hardware design, modeling and simulation, and high-performance computing. His robotics contributions began with the IBM 7565 manipulator, a large, high-accuracy hydraulic/electric robot targeted at precision assembly tasks. He later served as a hardware and software integrator for unmanned aerial vehicles, and he has worked extensively with the Mobile Robotics Laboratory and the Borg Laboratory of the Georgia Tech College of Computing on numerous research projects, including DARPA Tactical Mobile Robotics and DARPA Mobile Autonomous Robot Software. Tom has also taught courses in both mechanical and electrical engineering. For the DARPA Urban Grand Challenge effort, he was involved in the design and specification of the actuation, sensing, and computing hardware, and he has served as the lead in electronics design. Most recently, he is the Georgia Tech lead investigator for their involvement in the Autonomy Center of the Army Research Laboratory Collaborative Technology Alliance in Micro Autonomous Systems Technology.