Andrew Bennett

Andrew Bennett has more than 35 years of R&D experience developing novel robot systems for land, water and air use. In 1985-86 he worked at the Stanford Department of Mechanical Engineering on a novel robotic all-terrain wheelchair. From 1991 to 1997 he worked on a variety of autonomous underwater vehicles at the MIT AUV lab, including the Sea Squirt, Odyssey I, Odyssey II and the WHOI Autonomous Benthic Explorer. From 1997 to 1998 he worked on control systems for underwater vehicles and SSTO rocket systems at the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory. From 1998 to 2000 he worked for Walt Disney Imagineering Research & Development where he helped create a full-sized walking quadruped robot technology demonstrator and several ride effects currently installed in Disney’s Animal Kingdom. From 2000 to 2008 he was Director of Research and the Division Technology Officer (DTO) for iRobot’s Government and Industrial Robotics division, which went on to become Endeavor Robotics. At iRobot he was the Program Manager in charge of developing the PackBot mobile robot system; one of which is in the Smithsonian American History Museum. From 2008 to 2010 he was the VP for Research & Development at Scientific Systems Company, Inc. of Waltham, MA where he oversaw technical direction for a variety of cutting edge control and sensor development programs. In 2011 Dr. Bennett became the Director of the SCOPE program at the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering and taught Systems Engineering and Robotics. In 2019 he founded his own startup, Point Road Solutions, which is dedicated to creating engineering solutions for the ocean research community. Dr. Bennett currently has three patents issued and six more pending.

Education

Ph.D. in Ocean Engineering, MIT (1997)
M.S. in Mechanical Engineering Design, Stanford University (1986)
B.S. in Mechanical Engineering, MIT (1985)