Kevin Watson's JPL Homepage

Click for an even bigger image of Kevin and Rocky 8

R. Kevin Watson
Supervisor, Advanced Computer Systems and Technologies Group
Flight System Avionics Section
Autonomous Systems Division
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
California Institute of Technology
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Mail Stop 198-219
4800 Oak Grove Drive
Pasadena, California 91109

Office: +1 818-354-7526
Lab: +1 818-354-4557
Fax: +1 818-393-5007
E-mail: kevinw@jpl.nasa.gov

My FIRST Robotics software and documentation can be found here.

Current Tasks & Projects

Methodology and Design Tools for Radiation Tolerant System-On-A-Chip Task -- I'm the Principle Investigator of a NASA Code-T task to qualify the Xilinx devices mentioned below for spacecraft flight applications.
Advanced Mobility Avionics Task -- I'm the Co-Investigator of a task that is designing next generation avionics for future JPL space flight missions. We're using Xilinx's nifty Virtex-II Pro and Virtex-4 Field Programmable Gate Arrays as the cornerstone of a distributed avionics architecture. The portion of this task that I'm leading is porting software algorithms used for planetary rover autonomous navigation into reconfigurable hardware. Currently we're putting a lot of emphasis on accelerating JPL's stereo vision range map generation and visual odometry algorithms.
Mars Celestial Navigator -- I'm the Co-Investigator of a task that will design a very small navigation computer for future Mars rover missions using some of the technology developed on the above tasks.
NASA Center Project Manager, NASA Robotics Alliance Project. I design hardware and software for inclusion in the yearly FIRST Robotics competition. See http://robotics.nasa.gov, http://www.usfirst.org and http://kevin.org/frc for more information.

Past Tasks & Projects

Robotic Autonomy Architecture Research Team -- Helping design JPL's next generation rover technology. Rocky 8 is one of the experimental rovers that we test software on.
StarLight -- The first ever formation-flying space interferometer. Large baseline interferometers will eventually allow us to image planets in orbit around distant stars. As part of their "Inside JPL"series, Space.com has published a story titled "Tomorrow's Telescope: Wish Upon a Fake Star" about StarLight and my boss, Gary Blackwood.
GPS-LITS -- Helping Design the Most Accurate Atomic Clock for Future GPS Satellites.
Beagle 2 Lander -- Mars Atmospheric Oxidant Sensor (MAOS)
Genesis -- Red Team Review Board (2000)
Mars '01 Orbiter -- Red Team Review Board (2000)
Mars '01 Lander -- Mars Environmental Compatibility Assessment (MECA) Instrument (1999 - 2000)
Surface Acoustic Wave Hygrometer / µWeather Station (1994 - 1999)
Deep Space One Spacecraft -- Field Measurements Package (1997)
Deep Space Two -- Mars Microprobe (1995 - 1996)
ALICE Balloon Experiment (1994)
Active Pixel Sensor Camera (1993)
Clementine Spacecraft -- RRELAX Experiment (1993)

Recent Publications & Talks

1. "Multiple Embedded Processors for Fault-Tolerant Computing", Gary Bolotin, Robert Watson, Sunant Katanyoutanant, Gary Burke, and Mandy Wang, NASA Tech Briefs, Volume 29, Number 12, December 2005.

2. "Integrated Environmental Monitoring Instrument", Michael E. Hoenk, Robert Watson and Greg Cardell, NASA Tech Briefs, Volume 25, Number 11, November 2001.

3. "A Miniature Dewpoint Hygrometer for Monitoring Human Environments", M. E. Hoenk, G. Cardell, F. Noca, R. K. Watson, 30th International Conference on Environmental Systems, Toulouse, France, July 10-13, 2000.

4. "Development and Flight Test of a Fast, Miniature Dewpoint Hygrometer for Radiosonde Measurements of Tropospheric Humidity," M. E. Hoenk, R. K. Watson, G. Cardell, 8th Conference on Aviation, Range, and Aerospace Meteorology, 79th Annual AMS Meeting, Dallas, Texas, Jan. 10-15, 1999.

5. "A Miniature Environmental Station: Development and Flight Validation," M. E. Hoenk, K. Watson, G. Cardell, F. Noca, Nanospace '98, International Conference on Integrated Nano/Microtechnology for Space Applications, Houston, Texas, November 1-6, 1998.

6. "Flight Test of a Reference Radiosonde (a miniature, autonomous, wireless environmental monitor)," M. E. Hoenk, R. K. Watson, G. Cardell, R. Olson, F. Schmidlin, JPL Avionic Systems and Technology Division, June 16, 1998.

7. "Surface Acoustic Wave Microhygrometer," M. E. Hoenk, G. Cardell, D. Price, R. K. Watson, T. R. VanZandt, D. Y. Cheng, W. J. Kaiser, in SAE Technical Paper Series, #972388, 27th International Conference on Environmental Systems, Lake Tahoe, NV, July 14-17 (1997).

8 . "Surface Acoustic Wave Hygrometer: Flight Tests on the NASA DC8 Airborne Laboratory" M. E. Hoenk, T. R. VanZandt, D. A. McWatters, R. K. Watson, C. Kukkonen III, W. Kaiser, D. Cheng, Micromachining Workshop, SCCAVS Meeting, Anaheim, California, September 27-28, 1995.

9. "Test report for single event effects of the 80386DX microprocessor" R. Kevin Watson, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, National Technical Information Service, distributor (1993), ISBN: B00010IP60.

Have Some Links:

Random Cool Stuff:

Mars Exploration Rover Movie

Dan Maas' ultra cool "MER Movie" that depicts launch, EDL (Entry, Decent and Landing) and surface operations of one of the Mars Exploration Rovers. It's in quicktime format and 51.5 megabytes in size. If you're using Internet Explorer, right-click on the link and select "Save Target As..." to bring up a dialog that will allow you to save it to your local disk. If you're a teacher or mentor to kids and you don't have the bandwidth to download the file, send me an e-mail with your name and address and I'll send you the file on a CD.

9-22-03 Update: Dan Maas just told me, via e-mail, that their license to the music doesn't allow us to distribute the movie as one big quicktime file (streaming is okay, though). As I suspect this only applies to the version with music, I'll see if I can dig-up a version without the music and link to it here. So, until then I'm going to pull the link to the movie. Dan mentioned that you will be able to view the streamed version of the movie (with music) from Steve Squyres' Athena website in the near future.

9-24-03 Update: I've replaced the "with music" version with the downloadable "without music" version of the movie.

10-11-03 Update: The "with music" version can be viewed at the Athena website. I have two versions of the "without music" movie that are downloadable: Low Resolution (6.36MB) and High Resolution (50.6MB).
DARPA Grand Challenge
I'm an advisor to Team Caltech. I'm working with a group of undergrads and grad students to design, test and integrate the electronic hardware that will "drive" a vehicle autonomously from Barstow, CA to Las Vegas, NV within a ten hour period on October 8th, 2005. Our 2004 entry, Bob, managed to drive 1.7 miles of the course before getting tangled in barbed wire.
FIRST Robotics Competition

Blatantly ripped from FIRST's web site:

The FIRST Robotics Competition is a national engineering contest which immerses high school students in the exciting world of engineering. Teaming up with engineers from businesses and universities, students get a hands-on, inside look at the engineering profession. In six intense weeks, students and engineers work together to brainstorm, design, construct and test their "champion robot". With only six weeks, all jobs are critical path. The teams then compete in a spirited, no-holds-barred tournament complete with referees, cheerleaders and time clocks.

The partnerships developed between schools, businesses, and universities provide an exchange of resources and talent, highlighting mutual needs, building cooperation, and exposing students to new career choices. The result is a fun, exciting and stimulating environment in which all participants discover the important connection between classroom lessons and real world applications.

Each year, the competition is different, so returning teams always have a new challenge to look forward to. However, the details are kept secret until the unveiling at the Kick-Off workshop. This provides a high level of excitement as everyone sees the new challenge for the first time and ideas immediately begin forming in people's minds.

I'm currently working with a great group of kids from the William S. Hart High School located in Newhall, California. The team's website can be found here.