JPL Logo
A profile photo of Dr. Andrew Johnson

Dr. Andrew Johnson

JPL Fellow

About

Bio

Dr. Andrew E. Johnson is a JPL Fellow in the Guidance and Control Section of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Since joining JPL in 1997, he has been developing technologies and flight systems for autonomous navigation and mapping during descent to planets, moons, comets and asteroids. For the Mars Exploration Rovers, he was lead developer for the Descent Image Motion Estimation System, the first use of computer vision during planetary landing. For the Curiosity Mars Rover, he developed the Visual Odometry function that has been used continuously for accurate autonomous driving since landing in 2012. Recently, for Mars 2020, he led the development of the Lander Vision System which provided surface relative position estimates for Terrain Relative Navigation. Currently, Andrew is the Chief Engineer for the Enhanced Lander Vision System which will guide the Mars Sample Retrieval Lander to a safe and accurate landing near the samples being collected by the Perseverance rover.

Education

Andrew received undergraduate degrees in Mathematics and Engineering Physics from the University of Kansas and a Ph.D. in Robotics from Carnegie Mellon University.

Research Interests

Safe and Precise Planetary Landing. Autonomous Navigation. 3D Object Recognition.

Experience

Professional Experience

JPL Fellow 3/2025-present

Principal Robotics Systems Engineer 10/2004 – 2/2025

Senior Robotics Engineer 10/1997 – 9/2004

Section Staff Guidance and Control Section 4/2013-present

Mars 2020 Guidance Navigation and Control Subsystem Manager 4/2013-9/2021

Group Supervisor Guidance Navigation and Control Hardware 4/2011-7/2013

Research Community Service

Afterschool Math Tutor, Lego Robotics Instructor

Achievements

Awards & Recognitions

  • JPL Fellowship | For renowned expertise in the use of computer vision technologies to enhance the performance of Entry, Descent and Landing (EDL) systems and his collaborations within NASA, industry and academia. (2025)
  • NASA Award | Exceptional Public Achievement Medal (2022)
  • JPL Award | Magellan Award for Leadership or Excellence in a Field of Knowledge (2021)
  • JPL Award | Explorer Award for Strategic Leadership (2014)
  • NASA Award | Exception Technology Achievement Medal (2011)
  • JPL Principal Designation | 3430 - Guidance & Control (2004)
  • The Lew Allen Award for Excellence | Machine vision algorithms for safe and precise landing (2002)

Publications

A. Johnson, Y. Cheng, N. Trawny, J. Montgomery, S. Schroeder, J. Chang, D. Clouse, S. Aaron, S. Mohan, “Implementation of a Map Relative Localization System for Planetary Landing,” AIAA Journal Guidance Control and Dynamics, March 2023.

A. Johnson, Y. Cheng , J. Montgomery , Nikolas Trawny , B. Tweddle, and J. Zheng, “Real-Time Terrain Relative Navigation Test Results from a Relevant Environment for Mars Landing”, Proc. AIAA SciTech Conference, January 2015

A. Johnson, S. Goldberg, Y. Cheng and L. Matthies “Robust and Efficient Stereo Feature Tracking for Visual Odometry,” Proc. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA08), May 2008.

Andrew Johnson, Reg Willson, Yang Cheng, Jay Goguen, Chris Leger, Miguel SanMartin and Larry Matthies, “Design Through Operation of an Image-Based Velocity Estimation System for Mars Landing,” International Journal of Computer Vision, 74(3), pp. 319-41, January 2007.

Andrew E. Johnson, Allan Klumpp, James Collier and Aron Wolf, “Lidar-based Hazard Avoidance for Safe Landing on Mars,” AIAA Journal of Guidance, Control and Dynamics, 25(5), October 2002.

Andrew E. Johnson and Martial Hebert. "Using Spin-Images for efficient multiple model recognition in cluttered 3-D scenes." IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 21(5), pp. 433-449, 1999.