SEC scholar 18 May – 17 July 2026
Keenan Albee is an Assistant Professor at the University of Southern California and former Robotics Technologist in the Maritime and Multi-Agent Autonomy group at the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab. He received a Ph.D. in Aeronautics and Astronautics (Autonomous Systems) from MIT in 2022 under a NASA Space Technology Research Fellowship. His research focuses on model-aware autonomy for space and extreme environment robotics, leveraging real-time tools to make autonomous robotic operations safer and more efficient.
His work includes the first autonomous on-orbit rendezvous with an uncharacterized tumbling target demonstrated on the Astrobee robots aboard the ISS and multiple planning and multi-agent decision-making algorithms aboard the fully autonomous CADRE lunar rovers launching to the Moon. His research interests span extreme environment robotics, safe motion planning and control under uncertainty, and novel extreme environment systems development with a “theory to practice” philosophy of real-world field hardware validation.
Keenan’s objective is to strengthen new research directions with KTH collaborators and engage the broader KTH robotics and planning research community. His group is currently collaborating on the open source ATMOS microgravity robotics platform pioneered in Prof. Dimarogonas’ group. ECF allows for critical in-person exposure to the unique hardware testbeds available at KTH through DISCOWER, which will inform future collaborative extreme environment and multi-agent robotics research. New research connections with Prof. Dimarogonas and Prof. Mikael Johansson will also be formed, with special emphasis on resource-constrained planning under limited communications and in data-poor environments, allowing mobile robotic systems to operate in changing and uncertain environments.
Contact: kalbee@usc.edu
