Ashitey Trebi-Ollennu: The Engineer Behind NASA’s Robotic Arm For Mars

Ashitey Trebi-Ollennu is a lead engineer on InSight, NASA’s spacecraft which recently landed on Mars, and is in charge of the mission’s robotic arm mechanism.

Growing up, Ashitey Trebi-Ollennu was fascinated by the planes, and envisioned a future where robots would fly them. “I was fascinated by replacing human pilots with computers.”

The robotic arm

The goal of InSight is to understand how planets are formed. Their responsibility is to “pick up the instruments that the scientists are going to use to examine the planets hundreds of millions of miles away,” Ollennu said.

“The arm, more than 5 feet 9 inches (1.8 meters) long, has a camera attached that will provide 3D color views of the landing site. It is designed to place the seismometer on the surface and position the heat flow probe – a mole that can burrow 16 feet (five meters) into the ground.”

Ashitey Trebi-Ollennu

Ollennu received a “solid” academic foundation in Ghana Senior High Technical School, a Science and Technology oriented high school in Takoradi. In London, he majored in Avionics at the Department of Aeronautical Engineering, Queen Mary College, University of London and then obtained a Ph. D. in Control Systems Engineering, at Cranfield University in the United Kingdom. Later on, he moved to the US to do further research in robotics at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

He has already taken part in 5 missions landing on Mars, during the past 20 years. His former projects on Mars includes: the 2003 Mars Exploration Rover, Phoenix Mars Lander of 2007, Mars Science Laboratory in 2011, and the 2016 Insight Mars Lander.

In 2008, he was awarded the NASA Exceptional Engineering Achievement Medal for his contributions to the Mars Exploration Rover mission, and in 2010, the Specialist Silver Award from the Royal Aeronautical Society in the UK.

Inspiring the next generation: Ghana Robotic Academy Foundation

In order to inspiring generations of young scientists in his country, Ghana, Ollennu founded the Ghana Robotic Academy Foundation, in 2011. The nonprofit organization encourages school kids to engage in applied science by running hands-on robotics workshops and competitions throughout the country.

The results of that foundation have been great, as some of the student have competed in international robotic competitions like the World Robotics Olympiad and Robofest where they are encouraged to sharpen their skills in Computer, Science, Technology, Engineering, and Maths.

Source: CNN