People
Tad McGeer, Aerovel's founder and president, trained as an aeronautical engineer at Princeton and Stanford, and then joined the new Engineering Science faculty at Simon Fraser University in his native British Columbia. There he developed the concept of passive dynamic walking, which went on to be adopted as a paradigm for study of human locomotion and design of legged robots. In 1990 he returned to aeronautics, joining a Virginia start-up, Aurora Flight Sciences, as chief scientist. He headed early design studies on the Perseus and Theseus unmanned research aircraft, and then proposed the Aerosonde concept for long-range weather reconnaissance. This led to founding of The Insitu Group, beginning in a Silicon Valley garage in 1992, and moving to the Columbia River Gorge in 1994. Insitu pioneered development of miniature robotic aircraft in worldwide trials, with Aerosondes making the first unmanned Atlantic crossing (1998), first unmanned typhoon reconnaissance (2001), and first eye penetrations into tropical cyclones (2005). In 2000, Dr McGeer began design of the Seascan/Scaneagle miniature aircraft for long-endurance imaging reconnaissance. Seascan made the longest-ever flight for a ship-based aircraft in 2004, while the GeoRanger variant made the first unmanned geomagnetic surveys, and the Scaneagle military variant was adopted by the US Marines and Navy. Dr McGeer directed all of Insitu’s engineering throughout this period, with particular responsibility for conceptual and configuration design, performance, dynamics and control, avionics, algorithms, simulation, and onboard and ground software. By the time that Dr McGeer left Insitu in 2005, the company had more than 100 employees and more than $20M/year in revenue, with recognition as one of the fastest-growing technology firms in Washington state. The company went on to be bought by Boeing in 2008 for a reported $400M. Dr McGeer joined with his Stanford classmate and Insitu co-founder Andy von Flotow to start Aerovel in 2006, in which he is president and chief engineer. He has served on the FAA’s rulemaking committee for small unmanned aircraft systems, and is currently an affiliate faculty member in Aeronautics & Astronautics at the University of Washington, and founder and committee chair for the W Prize.
Chris Balogh completed concurrent bachelor’s degrees in computer science and software at Oregon Institute of Technology, and then worked in Seattle for several years on after-market avionics for airliners and bizjets. He came to the Gorge for Insitu and the great outdoors, and in due course joined Aerovel as an avionics engineer. He also serves as sometime R/C test pilot and photographer-in-chief.
Kris Gauksheim earned a BS in engineering sciences at Harvard, with a focus on electrical engineering and computer science, and then returned home to study robotics and embedded systems at the University of Washington. He joined Insitu in the midst of the Seascan/Scaneagle program, where he worked closely with Dr McGeer as a software developer, aircraft operator, and flight instructor on land and at sea. He was instrumental in developing Scaneagle’s differential-GPS technique for autonomous Skyhook retrieval. Kris joined Aerovel on Day 1, and works on next-generation ground and onboard software for robotic vehicles.
Rob Heavey completed his BS in aeronautics and astronautics at the University of Washington in 2007, with a focus on control systems and aerodynamics. He joined Aerovel in 2008, and currently works on mechanical design and prototype development.
Damon McMillan earned a BS in aeronautics and astronautics at MIT, focusing on aerodynamics. He taught math and science for two years in Boston public schools, and then joined Orbital Sciences in Arizona, working on aerodynamic models for the Hyper-X launcher. He moved to England for an MS in aerospace dynamics at Cranfield, where he developed the “switchwing” VTOL concept. He then came to the Columbia Gorge as a performance and flight test engineer for Insitu, and now does much of Aerovel’s mechanical design and prototype development.
John Stafford hails from Pennsylvania, where he studied engineering and art at Bucknell while working on a Formula Ford race team and as chief engineer for the campus radio station. He then founded Now Sound Associates, specialising in audio design, recording, and broadcast engineering. From there he moved west to design electronic signs and displays at EMCO, starting as a board designer, and moving eventually to general manager before deciding that engineering development was more appealing than administration. He then accepted a technical position at Keytronic in Spokane, where he became the senior engineer responsible for automation control systems used in keyboard assembly. In the early 1980s he took up automated film processing at MSM Design, leading the electronics department and the development of control systems for large-format movie cameras. Two of these cameras were notably used to make IMAX 3D films of on-orbit assembly of the International Space Station. He came to Insitu as an avionics designer and troubleshooter, developing equipment for video processing, RF communications, and onboard power. He now leads avionics development at Aerovel, and makes prototypes at his machine shop in the hills above the Columbia Gorge.
Photo by Leah Nash