Houston, TX 77062
(346) 298-3156
[email protected]

Software engineer with 15+ years experience researching, integrating, and developing technologies for robotics, intelligent agents, and automation.

• 2005 — M.S., Computer Science and Engineering, University of Notre Dame
• 2000 — B.S., Computer Science and Information, Univeristy of Hawai'i at Manoa
• 2000 — B.A., Philosophy, University of Hawai'i at Manoa

Lead architect and developer of PRIDE Automation and PRIDE Monitoring to enable autonomous procedure execution for the PRIDE software suite, utilized commercially by Fortune 500, private spaceflight companies, and NASA. Accomplished ROS developer on a variety of projects, including ROS integration with PRIDE and the 3 stages of the DARPA Robotics Challenge.

Related videos:

• (2020) PHARAOH Phase II — ISS caretaking demonstration (simulation)
• (2017) Using PRIDE for TRACBot navigation and manipulation (simulation)
• (2016) PHARAOH Phase I — automating Robonaut2 taskboard manipulation (simulation)
• (2015) Atlas robot performing tasks at the DRC Finals
• (2014) 2-arm egosphere gesture visualization in RViz
• (2014) Atlas mimicking human motion using a Kinect
• (2012) Betabot obstacle avoidance (Qt HSSH UI, simulation)

Collaborated with company founder on the AndOr platform, a general application development framework for creating internet-distributed form-based data collection systems. Analyzed and corrected proprietary business logic rules engine called SciennaRules! for consistency, completeness, and efficiency. Implemented an automated OCR pipeline for analysis of real-estate related legal documents and portfolio due diligence.

Managed IT department of a non-profit research institution. Increased computational efficiency of spectral deconvolution software for analysis of planetary spacecraft data by NASA scientists by an order of magnitude.

Developed the Agent Development Environment (ADE) for distributed, failure­tolerant autonomous robots, which has since provided the platform for dozens of peer reviewed publications for over 15 years.

• S. Hart, J. Kramer, S. Bell, D. Schreckenghost, S. Gee, and R. Burridge, "Remotely Operating Robotic Systems Using Human-readable Procedures with PHARAOH." In The 16th International Conference on Space Operations 2021,

• D. Schreckenghost, S. Bell, D. Kortenkamp, and J. Kramer, "Procedure Automation: Sharing Work with Users." In AAAI Spring Symposia, 2018.

• R.P. Bonasso, S. Hart, J. Kramer, and A. Huaman, "CASE: A Cognitive Architecture for Space Exploration." In i-SAIRAS 18. Madrid, Spain, 2018.

• S. Hart, J. Kramer, S. Gee, and R. Burridge, "The PHARAOH procedure execution architecture for autonomous robots or collaborative human-robot teams." In 2016 25th IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN), 2016.

• R. Burridge, K. Khokar, P. Beeson, J. Kramer, M. Chu, et al., "A Coordinated Control Architecture for Disaster Response Robots." Technical Report, TRACLabs, Inc., San Antonio, TX, 2016.

• J. Kramer, J.P. Combe, and T.B. McCord, "Harness that S.O.B.: Distributed Remote Sensing Data Processing in a Small Office/Business." Presented at American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting (AGU’09), San Francisco, CA, December 2009, abstract IN43D-1175.

• J. Kramer and M. Scheutz, "RADIC — Towards a General Method for Integrating Reactive and Deliberative Layers." In International Transactions on Systems Science and Applications, 3(3):183-192, 2007.

• J. Kramer and M. Scheutz, "Robotic Development Environments for Autonomous Mobile Robots: A Survey." In Autonomous Robots, 22(2):101-132, 2007.

• M. Scheutz, P. Schermerhorn, J. Kramer, and D. Anderson, "First Steps toward Natural Human-Like HRI." In Autonomous Robots, 22(4):411-423, 2007.

• J. Kramer and M. Scheutz and P. Schermerhorn, "Talk to me!: Enabling Communication between Robotic Architectures and their Implementing Infrastructures." In IROS’07, San Diego, CA, 2007.

• M. Scheutz and J. Kramer, "Reflection and Reasoning Mechanisms for Failure Detection and Recovery in a Distributed Robotic Architecture for Complex Robots." In ICRA’07, Rome, Italy, 2007.

• J. Kramer and M. Scheutz, "ADE: A Framework for Robust Complex Robotic Architectures." In IROS’06, Beijing, China, 2006.

• J. Kramer, M. Scheutz, J. Brockman, and P. Kogge, "Facing up to the Inevitable: Intelligent Error Recovery in Massively Parallel Processing in Memory Architectures." In PDPTA’06, Las Vegas, NV, 2006.

• J. Kramer and M. Scheutz, "ADE: Filling a Gap Between Single and Multiple Agent Systems." In The 18th European Meeting on Cybernetics and Systems Research (AT2AI06), Vienna, Austria, 2006.

• M. Scheutz and J. Kramer, "RADIC–A Generic Component for the Integration of Existing Reactive and Deliberative Layers." In AAMAS’06, Hakodate, Japan, 2006.

• M. Scheutz, P. Schermerhorn, J. Kramer, and C. Middendorff, "The Utility of Affect Expression in Natural Language Interactions in Joint Human-Robot Tasks." In Proceedings of the 2006 Human-Robot Interaction Conference (HRI2006), Salt Lake City, Utah, 2006.

• P. Schermerhorn, J. Kramer, T. Brick, D. Anderson, A. Dingler, and M. Scheutz, "DIARC: A Testbed for Natural Human-Robot Interaction." In Proceedings of the 2006 AAAI Mobile Robot Workshop, Boston, MA, July 2006.

• J. Kramer and M. Scheutz, "GLUE — A Component Connecting Schema-based Reactive to Higher-level Deliberative Layers for Autonomous Agents." In Proceedings of the 16th International FLAIRS Conference, St. Augustine, FL, 2003.