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About

Peter Vieira is a robotics engineer whose research bridges terrestrial humanoid robotics and extraterrestrial sample acquisition. His work spans two critical domains: enabling humanoid robots to perform complex, tool-based tasks through teleoperation, and developing sampling systems for planetary exploration. In his highly cited 2013 paper on humanoid robot teleoperation for power tool tasks (24 citations), Vieira implemented inverse kinematics to allow a physical humanoid platform to cut through walls—work directly supporting the DARPA Robotics Challenge. His foundational derivation of forward and inverse kinematics for the 27-degree-of-freedom HUBO2 humanoid (11 citations) remains a key reference for researchers working on similar platforms. On the space robotics side, Vieira contributed to the Mars 2020 mission by developing software for the Sampling and Caching Subsystem testbeds (13 citations), ensuring reliable hardware-software integration under mission-critical conditions. He also led the development and validation of the BiBlade sampling chain for potential comet surface sample return missions, demonstrating full-scale touch-and-go operations with a robotic arm (8 and 5 citations). His work on the Intelligent Robotics System Architecture (IRSA) (9 citations) provides a reusable software framework for diverse robotics testbeds. Vieira’s unique combination of expertise in humanoid manipulation and space sampling systems makes him a versatile contributor to both assistive robotics and planetary science.