Biographical Sketch

Carl D. Crane III is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and Director of the Center for Intelligent Machines and Robotics (CIMAR) at the University of Florida. He received his B.S. and M.E. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1978 and 1979. Following this he spent five years as an officer in the Army Corps of Engineers. He then went on to continue his studies and received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Florida in 1987. In 2003 he was named a fellow of ASME.

Dr. Crane has been involved in research in the areas of spatial mechanisms, tensegrity systems, robotics, and autonomous navigation for over twenty years. Current activities include the development and implementation of system architectures for autonomous ground vehicle navigation and the design and implementation of passive parallel mechanisms to be used for force control applications. This work is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and the Air Force Research Laboratory at Tyndall Air Force Base, Florida and external research funding has totaled over five million dollars over the past five years. Dr. Crane has also been team leader of the University of Florida’s 2004 and 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge autonomous vehicle development efforts and for the University of Florida’s 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge project team. Dr. Crane has authored one book and over forty papers in the area of spatial geometry and robotic systems. He has supervised sixty six Master's graduates and seventeen Ph.D. graduates during his career at the University of Florida.

last updated 26 Nov 2007