Tara Bartlett

Tara Bartlett BE (Hons 1) (Aeronautical(Space))

PhD submitted June 2026

Lead Robotics Software Engineer for Project Charlotte at Crest Robotics [2024-2025]
- Led the software team for the 3D-printing-of-houses Charlotte spider robot prototype demonstrated at IAC (see ABC's coverage below)
PhD Candidate at the Australian Centre for Field Robotics [03/2020 - 06/2026]
- Topic: Real-time Motion Planning Algorithms for Robot Traversability
- Combining dynamic stability and traversability analysis into a computationally-feasible online calculation for bipedal systems
  - Interned at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) for 6 months: worked on the ground mobility component of the Sample Recovery Helicopters in the Mars Sample Return Campaign (2022-2023)
First Class Honours in Aeronautical (Space) Engineering, University of Sydney, Australia
- Thesis: Hybrid Aerial-Ground Vehicle Autonomy in GPS Denied Environments
  - completed at NASA JPL as part of Team CoSTAR in the DARPA Subterranean Challenge

Senior robotics software engineer - I’ve been developing full custom stacks (and motion planning algorithms) for robots ranging from agile bipeds to drones with wheels and Mars helicopters in collaborative but lean/fast-paced projects for almost 8 years. I’ve been fascinated by science and technology since early childhood and see great potential in applying emerging capabilities to real-world problems. I’ve led several R&D teams and founded professional student societies for postgrad research students.

Software Lead for Project Charlotte

Crest Robotics

Mars Sample Recovery Helicopter

Artist's Concept, NASA JPL. Part of the Mars Sample Return Campaign

G&C Team Member for the Rollocopter

NASA JPL, DARPA Subterranean Challenge Team CoSTAR

Cassie research group team lead

Agility Robotics-Cassie Robot; whilePhD candidate at ACFR

Publications

[1] Tara Bartlett, Ian Manchester, Real-time Bipedal Footstep Planning for Dynamic Traversability. IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2024.

[2] William Reid, Tara Bartlett, Arthur Bouton, Marlin P. Strub, Michael Newby, Stephen Gerdts, Joshua Martin, Scott Moreland, and Ryan McCormick, Planning and Control for Autonomous Drives of the Mars Sample Recovery Helicopter. 2024 IEEE Aerospace Conference (AERO), Big Sky, MT, USA, March 2024.

[3] Ali-akbar Agha-mohammadi, Kyohei Otsu, Benjamin Morrell, et al. Nebula: Quest for Robotic Autonomy in Challenging Environments; Team CoSTAR at the DARPA Subterranean Challenge. arXiv:2103.11470, 2021.*

[4] David Fan, Rohan Thakker, Tara Bartlett, Meriem Ben Miled, Leon Kim, Evangelos Theodorou, Ali-akbar Agha-mohammadi, Autonomous Hybrid Ground/Aerial Mobility in Unknown Environments. IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Macau, 2019.

[5] Thomas Lew, Tomoki Emmei, David Fan, Tara Bartlett, Angel Santamaria-Navarro, Rohan Thakker, Ali-akbar Agha-mohammadi, Contact Inertial Odometry: Collisions are your Friend. The International Symposium on Robotics Research (ISRR), Hanoi, Vietnam, 2019.

[6] Tara Bartlett: Hybrid Aerial/Ground Vehicle Autonomy in GPS-Denied Environments, University of Sydney Bachelor Thesis 2019

[7] The two papers directly above as poster presentations, Southern California Robotics Symposium (SCR), Los Angeles, CA, April 2019.

In Preparation

[8] PhD Thesis: Real-time Motion Planning Algorithms for Robotic Traversability,
Thesis submission date: 31st December 2025 to The University of Sydney, Australia.

This thesis covers work on two projects: Dynamic footstep planning for biped robots (see [1] above) and the Mars SRH Surface Mobility planning and control (see [2]).

The underlying concept is the identification of possible representations of dynamically complicated systems or environments that allow for real-time calculation without sacrificing system agility or robustness.

Work Experience

2024-2025: Lead Robotics Software Engineer at Crest Robotics

Led the crest robotics software team (2 FTE, 1 part-time, and a few interns, and an external partnership) for the Charlotte spider robot demonstrated at the International Astronautical Congress, Sydney 2025
Full software and sensor stack design, development, integration, and testing in just 10 months(including a custom motion planning algorithm)
Team covered low-level control, motor drivers, and state estimation, interns did sensor integration; I designed and developed the rest of the autonomy stack (sensor suite usage, ops state machine, motion planning, networking, ground station, simulation, integration,teleop interface, ...)

2020 - 2026: PhD Candidate at the Australian Centre for Field Robotics

Real-time Motion Planning Algorithms for Robot Traversability
Supervisor: Professor Ian Manchester

My thesis includes two case studies, one detailed here and the next detailed in the section below, carried out as a visiting student researcher at JPL.

- - Working on Cassie hardware and Digit models (bipedal robots developed by Agility Robotics)
  - I am working to combine dynamically-stable motion planning and traversability analysis into a computationally-feasible online/real-time algorithm.
  - My research involves learning about optimisation programs, bipedal robot modelling and stability, and testing on hardware and in simulation.
  - In my first year, I did most of the integration/comms stack setup as well as defining the safe work procedures, risk assessments, and setting up all the git CI/CD, work procedures, and also well-documented code (doxygen), readmes, and an active ongoing wiki.
  - Refactored and continued development shared with a team of five.

Cassie, Agility Robotics

2022 - 2023: Visiting Student Researcher at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory* (6 months)

Member of the Ground Mobility team for the Sample Recovery Helicopter on the Mars Sample Return campaign
Worked on software development, integration, and testing of the mobility testbed; developed and streamlined testing procedures/user interfaces.
Gained familiarity with docker, python, bash, planning and mapping algorithms, system integration, running and streamlining hardware testing, data analysis, ROS networking and interfacing.
One of two full-time software engineers who developed the autonomy stack

SRH Artist's Concept, NASA JPL

2019 - 2019: Research Assistant at the Australian Centre for Field Robotics

- - Working on Cassie (bipedal robot, as per the PhD)
  - Creating an infrastructure for long term development including: Safety protocols, Continuous integration (Gitlab), Data management, Battery management
  - Main task: creating a continuous integration environment in Gitlab which runs several simulations on control system code software updates before pushing to the master branch or uploading to the robot hardware
  - I did most of the integration/comms stack setup as well as defining the safe work procedures, risk assessments, and setting up all the git CI/CD, work procedures, and also well-documented code (doxygen), readmes, and an active ongoing wiki.

2019 - 2026: C++/ROS, Space Engineering, Advanced Control + Optimisation, and Dynamics Tutor

- - Tutoring the Introduction to C++ and ROS course to 3rd year undergraduates
    - - Helping students work with Turtlebots
  - Tutoring the space engineering course to third year undergraduates
    - - Students learn about orbital mechanics - keplarian orbit models, orbit determination, GPS pseudorange calculations
      - A space robotics component - a mini thesis based on rover design and implementation, path planning and traversability, or docking and berthing algorithms tested on a UR5 robotic arm.
  - Introduction to Control Systems
    - PID, state space, etc.
  - Advanced Control and Optimisation:
    - - Teaching students robotic control algorithms

2018 - 2019: Visiting Student Researcher at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory* (6 months)

Member of the Caltech-MIT-JPL Guidance and Control team for the DARPA Subterranean Challenge
Designing and implementing collision avoidance, traversability analysis, and methods for navigating without localisation for a hybrid ground-aerial vehicle in a range of environments with varying complexity, simulation development
Gaining familiarity with C++, Point Cloud Libraries, sensor integration, local planning and mapping algorithms, testing my algorithms in real time on hardware
Guidance and Control team was 3 people when I was involved, including the software integration and hardware testing.
My research was also towards my undergraduate thesis: Hybrid Aerial/Ground Vehicle Autonomy in GPS-Denied Environments, linked above, under 'Publications'.

Wall following with collision avoidance, ground mode

Aerial wall following in a representative environment

Hybrid wall following and collision avoidance through a maze

2017 - 2018: Space Software Intern at Saber Astronautics (5 months)

Processed proton, electron, alpha particle, and x-ray data from ACE and GOES satellites
I created a graphing interface in Unity using C# - coding up pixels/line/point drawing to show a graph- capable of selecting points, zooming into the graph, selecting different dates and types of weather features to show, and accessing the australian space weather API
Completed a literature review on space weather effects and storm warning algorithms
Large project (my part was roughly 6000 lines of code)

Space weather graphing interface**

2018 - 2018: School/University Tutor, Tutoring for Excellence, Sydney (5 months)

Private tutoring for primary, high school, and university students

Key Skills and University Projects

Key Skills

- - - Proficient in C, C++, C#, Robot Operating System (ROS), Git Version Control, Unity Game Development, MATLAB, Object-Oriented Programming
    - Some experience with Julia and Python, Gazebo, and Mujoco
    - Familiar with Linux, Windows, and Apple operating systems
    - Completed several research projects during my undergraduate degree

2016 - 2018: Aerial International Racing of Unmanned Systems (AIRUS)

AIRUS (Aerial International Robotic Racing of Unmanned Systems) is an international collaboration between students at The University of Sydney and Texas A&M University working to make international drone racing competitions a reality. We hoped to start up a competition where two universities work together in an international partnership, competing against other pairs of universities on identical race courses. The drones would be manually piloted in real time from another country.

My work involved:

International collaboration for development of hardware and software for an internet-based UAV teleoperation system, using the MAVLink protocol sent over UDP with Node.js
Contributing to the development of the drone hardware systems and communication systems.
Gained significant experience with drones, testing, and software system design and development
Also did a research project that was tangential to this which developed a predictive interface (essentially a smiths predictor) for a heads up display for the pilot. MOre info in the next section.

2016 - 2017: Advanced Aerospace Research Projects 1&2

Design of delay compensation software for a pilot flying the AIRUS system, implemented in C++ and Qt (user interface design tool)
Final goal was to create a usable interface, able to communicate efficiently and reliably with other components of the AIRUS system, while predicting the movement of a UAV based on the latest available control and telemetry data
Resulting interface takes keyboard input, and runs a simple quadcopter simulator with simulated delays

2017: Space Engineering 2; 1U-CubeSat Solar-Sail Satellite Design

Stowed configuration

Deployed configuration

1 unit CubeSat designed to deploy a solar sail of 2.7m x 2.7m.
My work was on the mylar solar sail (payload) in which we used an origami-based method to store the sail and used rolled measuring tape as the spring mechanism to deploy the sail
The tape was also the support structure, forming strong beams once deployed
The satellite was designed to be launched on a high-altitude balloon

2016: Advanced Engineering; Business Project

Team lead in a subject which involved developing an idea for a start up.
Multidisciplinary team, designed a unique device for dispensing pills for those with memory deficiency.
Designed, presented, and defended a business proposal for this idea to be developed with an small-business incubator

2015: Advanced Engineering; Engineers Without Borders (EWB) Challenge 2015

Designed a facility for an underdeveloped settlement which would use solar arrays to charge batteries which would power a UV water purification system and provide the remaining power to the grid
Full research and development proposal written and presented to EWB officials, subsystem demonstration and 3D models created

Leadership Experience

More detail in my CV available on request.

2022: School of Aero/Mech (AMME) Higher Degree by Research (HDR) Crew, Founding Member

As a postgraduate research student, I was a founding member of the engineering postgraduate student society, creating opportunities for students to connect socially and professionally. Organiser of:

The first annual Engineering HDR Student Conference at our university
A series of social and professional networking events, allowing students to present their research in a supportive environment, form collaborations with people in other areas, and connect with the wider engineering community.
Ran mental health and research student orientation workshops

2017 - 2018: Chair of American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics,

University of Sydney Student Branch (AIAA USSB)

Lead a committee of around 15 people organising events such as seminars, panels, trips to aviation museums for the freshman cohort, open days etc.

Member of the AIAA Sydney Student Branches committee and the AIAA Sydney Section; contributing to events such as student-industry networking nights (around 200 attendees), conference trips (such as the International Astronautical Congress)

2016 - 2018: AIRUS Team Leader

General management of international team, recruiting and training new members, committed to development of the system

2016 - 2018: Sydney Women in Aerospace Engineering (SWAE) Executive Committee

Assisting in the running of committee meetings, keeping minutes of all meetings, managing membership of the society, general organisation of regular activities and special events

2015 - 2017: AIAA USSB 2nd Year Representative, Secretary

Assisting in the running of committee meetings, keeping minutes of all meetings, managing membership of the society, general organisation of regular activities and special events

Find out more about me here.

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