Benjamin Joffe is a Research Scientist in the Aerospace, Transportation & Advanced Systems Laboratory at the Georgia Tech Research Institute. He holds an M.S. in Computer Science from Georgia Tech. His work is at the intersection of Computer Vision, Machine Learning, and Robotics. His research interests include 3D Perception for highly-variable and deformable objects; robot learning for manipulation tasks; real-world generalization from synthetic and multi-modal data; Machine Learning for chemical sensing and biomanufacturing; Deep Learning algorithms for novel modalities and low-data scenarios. 

Dr. Lonnie Parker is the Collaborative Autonomy Branch Chief in the Robotics and Autonomous Systems Division of the ATAS Laboratory at GTRI and serves as the PI for multiple programs. He has 10+ years of experience in managing DoD-sponsored projects and is focused on designing collaborative behaviors for unmanned systems in both the maritime and air domains. Prior to joining GTRI, Dr. Parker spent seven years at a NAVSEA warfare center, NUWC Division Newport, where he performed research into maritime autonomy through ONR-sponsored and internally funded efforts. Lonnie received a Ph.D. in Electrical & Computer Engineering from Georgia Tech in 2012. His research advisor was Prof. Ayanna M. Howard. Lonnie received an M.S. and B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the Rochester Institute of Technology in 2006.

Charles Pippin is a Senior Research Scientist at the Georgia Tech Research Institute, GTRI. His research interests include collaborative autonomy algorithms, machine learning, and multi-robot systems. In his current work, he is investigating cooperation between autonomous systems, as part of GTRI's Unmanned Systems Initiative. Charles received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Georgia Tech in 2013. His research advisor was Prof. Henrik I. Christensen. Charles received an M.S. in Computer Science from Georgia Tech in 2004 and holds a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

Ai-Ping Hu is a principal research engineer in the Georgia Tech Research Institute’s Intelligent Sustainable Technologies Division. He received his BS in Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering from Cornell University and Ph.D. from the Georgia Institute of Technology. Prior to joining GTRI in 2009, Dr. Hu co-founded a start-up robotics company applying learning control to achieve high precision in lightweight flexible manufacturing robots.  His current research interests include agricultural robotics, nonlinear control and vision-guided manipulation.

Mike Heiges received the Ph.D. degree from the Georgia Tech School of Aerospace Engineering, in 1989. He is currently a Principal Research Engineer with the Georgia Tech Research Institute, where he works as the Associate Division Chief of the Robotics and Autonomous Systems Division. His background is in aircraft flight dynamics and automatic control and he manages several of GTRI’s swarming UAV programs. He is an Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and a member of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI).