Howie Choset

Howie Choset is a Professor of Robotics at the Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University. He directs the Undergraduate Robotics Minor and leads the Biorobotics Laboratory, where his research focuses on snake robots, motion planning, and medical robotics. He is also affiliated with the Manufacturing Futures Institute.

• Ph.D., Mechanical Engineering, California Institute of Technology (1996)
• M.S., Mechanical Engineering, California Institute of Technology (1995)
• B.S.E., Computer Science and Engineering, University of Pennsylvania (1990)
• B.S., Economics, The Wharton School of Business (1990)

Choset's research centers on robotics for confined and complex environments, particularly through the development of snake robots. His work integrates mechanism design, path and motion planning, and estimation to enable applications in surgery, manufacturing, infrastructure inspection, and search and rescue. He is a pioneer in medical robotics and has co-founded Medrobotics to commercialize minimally invasive surgical robots.

His recent publications highlight a strong focus on ergodic exploration, multi-agent systems, motion planning under uncertainty, and medical robotics. Themes include optimizing robot trajectories for information gathering, solving complex path planning problems with dynamic obstacles, and advancing autonomous systems for disaster response and space exploration (e.g., the EELS robot for Enceladus).

• MIT Technology Review Top 100 Innovators under 35 (2002)
• Best Paper Award, RIA (1999)
• Best Paper Award, ICRA (2003)
• Best Paper, IEEE Bio Rob (2006)
• Best Video, ICRA (2011)
• Nominations for best papers at ICRA, IROS, and CLAWAR

Choset has advised numerous students, many of whom have won top awards. His lab has received significant funding for robotics research, including projects in surgical robotics, additive manufacturing, and autonomous exploration. He is the lead author of the textbook Principles of Robot Motion and is actively involved in educational innovation through custom robotics labs.

He leads the Biorobotics Laboratory at CMU, which develops advanced robotic systems like snake robots and the EELS (Exobiology Extant Life Surveyor) robot for NASA missions. The lab collaborates with industry and government agencies on applications ranging from surgery to space exploration.