Brian Roberts is the Robotic Technologist in the Satellite Servicing Projects Division at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. His team is maturing the robotic technology needed to perform satellite servicing in space as well as developing the capability to simulate the dynamics of a robotic system interacting with space objects and using industrial robotic platforms to simulate motion of space objects. Before coming to Goddard, Brian spent 6 years as a research engineer at the University of Maryland. There he worked on teams that developed and tested various robotic systems ranging from those designed to service satellites and fly on the shuttle, to those that can put themselves together and take themselves apart in space, to those that assist physical therapists working with shoulder rehabilitation patients, to those that autonomously find and sample life at the bottom of the ocean. Most of his time was spent coordinating the design, assembly, testing, and operation of the systems and conducting much of the testing underwater in the university's Neutral Buoyancy Research Facility.
Brian earned a Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, and completed a Master of Science in the same field at the University of Maryland, where he also completed coursework in Fire Protection Engineering.
