Max Robotics — Global Service Robot Directory + US Certification

About

Michael McHenry is a leading roboticist whose work has fundamentally advanced autonomous navigation for planetary exploration. His primary research areas include robotic autonomy, reusable software frameworks, and vision-based localization for extreme environments. McHenry’s most significant contribution is his role in developing the self-driving AutoNav system for NASA’s Perseverance rover, which has autonomously evaluated 88% of the rover’s 17.7-kilometer journey on Mars—a landmark achievement in off-world robotics. His foundational work on the CLARAty software framework (98 citations) established a reusable, object-oriented architecture for integrating motion control, vision, and manipulation algorithms, enabling faster development of future robotic systems. McHenry also led the creation of a ROS-based simulator to test the Enhanced Navigation (ENav) software critical to the Mars 2020 mission’s success. His earlier research on vision-based localization for urban environments, developed under DARPA’s MARS2020 program, demonstrated GPS-free navigation using only stereo cameras. Through simulation studies for planetary science missions, McHenry has consistently reduced the need for human intervention, proving that intelligent autonomy can unlock new scientific discoveries on other worlds.