GoKawiilLike many engineers, Sarah Downs says she knew she wanted to pursue a STEM career from a young age. As a teenager, she discovered robotics through her Tulsa, Okla., middle school’s First Lego League team, and she fell in love with the field, she says. Downs participated in the international robotics program from 2014 to 2016.
Watching PBS specials on NASA Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity, and seeing the live broadcast of the Curiosity rover launch in 2011, inspired the teen to dream of a career working with NASA.
Sarah Downs MEMBER GRADE Graduate student member UNIVERSITY Texas A&M University in College Station MAJOR Electric engineering
“Don’t stop asking questions. Especially in engineering, don’t pretend like you know everything, because science is about constantly wanting to learn and listen.”
Rather than using cameras, Downs’s robotic arm deploys a force-based insertion process to sense position and orientation of objects in the arm’s environment. The robot loosely grips an antenna and, with a torque sensor on its gripper, “feels” the force feedback of where the satellite and antenna are in relation to each other. The robot then guides the antenna assembly into a target opening on its satellite and maintains the position during adhesion. Adding to the complexity, the robot performs its task in zero gravity. “Without gravity, you now have to consider the arm’s reaction torques on the satellite to avoid flinging it into space,” Downs says. Any motion from the arm during the insertion process, especially from increased forces, could cause the satellite to continue movement in that direction. To combat that, Downs is performing calculations for the project to direct targeted reverse thrusts and counter the force of the robot’s motions. Her graduate project captures the simple yet complex nature of robotics that she finds fascinating, she says. “I think robots are both more and also less complicated than people think,” she says. “Really, all you need to start programming a robot is its Denavit-Hartenberg parameters, and you can do a lot with that,” she says, referencing the four values used to describe the position and orientation of a robotic arm and manipulators. Even with different grippers and degrees of freedom, “fundamentally, all robot manipulators start there,” she says. “But,” she adds, “we’re still learning so much about how robots interact with their environment. Even something simple to us, like manipulating a pen, is still incredibly complex for robots.” Downs is completing her doctoral thesis in the Robotic Space Simulator project at Texas A&M’s Robotics and Automation Design (RAD) Lab, which specializes in developing machines that can survive in extreme environments. It collaborates with NASA. Her thesis advisor is Robert Ambrose, a NASA veteran who launched the RAD Lab in 2022. The IEEE member is set to serve as associate director of the school’s Space Institute, due to open this year in Houston. The research facility is being built next to the Johnson Space Center. After earning her Ph.D., Downs says, she hopes to one day work for NASA, developing rovers that collect samples from Mars or robotic arms that perform tasks on space stations. To learn more about robots, check out IEEE Spectrum’s guide. Getting out of the engineering bubble Downs joined IEEE in 2020 as a freshman at UTulsa to get more involved in electrical engineering events on campus. At the time, the COVID-19 pandemic kept clubs and organizations from meeting in person. She was active in her school’s IEEE student branch and was elected as its 2022–2024 president. Under her leadership, the branch went from having a few events to hosting one every two weeks. They included lunch-and-learn sessions and dinners that connected students with professional engineers and the university’s alumni. Downs also organized hands-on workshops on soldering, 3D printing, CAD modeling, and résumé-building. Her efforts helped increase the branch’s executive board membership from roughly five students to 25 in 2023. The same year, her soldering workshop attracted about 80 students. She says she enjoyed working with IEEE, especially “engaging with alumni and learning from engineers.” IEEE is a great resource for networking opportunities, she says, noting that “during the COVID-19 pandemic, engineering students stayed in their bubbles.” IEEE events helped the students make connections that could serve them well, she says. “Networking is very important, especially in today’s tough job market,” she says. “It’s a lot about who you know and how people observe your work ethic.” Downs, who now serves as an IEEE graduate advisor for UTulsa’s student branch, says she has seen firsthand how the school’s student branch network has benefited its student members. “A lot of them have found jobs” because of IEEE, she says.