David A. Mindell, PhD, is Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and Dibner Professor of the History of Engineering and Manufacturing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. David has spent twenty-five years researching the myriad relationships between people and machines. He served as an MIT department head for five years, and has led or contributed to more than 25 oceanographic expeditions. David has developed and commercially licensed spread-spectrum sonar technologies for undersea navigation. He is the author of five books, including Our Robots, Ourselves: Robotics and the Myths of Autonomy (2015), Digital Apollo: Human and Machine in the First Six Lunar Landings (2008) and Between Human and Machine: Feedback, Control, and Computing Before Cybernetics (2000). David is an Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and a Senior Member of the IEEE. He is Co-founder and CEO of Humatics Corporation, which is pioneering microlocation technologies to revolutionize how people and machines locate, navigate and collaborate.
David A. Mindell
Frances and David Dibner Professor of the History of Engineering and Manufacturing (STS) Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics
E51-185F 617-253-0221 mindell@mit.edu
Recent Books
Our Robots, Ourselves: Robotics and the Myths of Autonomy
In Our Robots, Ourselves, David Mindell offers a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the cutting edge of robotics today, debunking commonly held myths and exploring the rapidly changing relationships between humans and machines.
Digital Apollo: Human and Machine in Spaceflight
As Apollo 11’s Lunar Module descended toward the moon under automatic control, a program alarm in the guidance computer’s software nearly caused a mission abort.