Max Robotics — Global Service Robot Directory + US Certification

About

John Bares is a pioneering roboticist whose career has centered on autonomous mobile systems, legged locomotion, and field robotics in extreme environments. Working primarily at Carnegie Mellon University's National Robotics Engineering Center, Bares has made foundational contributions to the design and deployment of walking robots capable of operating in terrain inaccessible or dangerous to humans. His most celebrated work involves the Ambler and Dante II robots — ambitious systems designed for planetary exploration and volcanic crater investigation, respectively. The Ambler (1989, 211 citations) demonstrated that legged rovers could autonomously navigate Martian-like terrain, while Dante II (1999, 269 citations) combined rappelling mechanics with scanning laser rangefinding and multilevel control to achieve remarkable mobility inside active volcanoes. These projects collectively shaped modern thinking about robotic locomotion architectures and remote exploration. Beyond exploration, Bares extended autonomous robotics into industrial applications, developing a robotic excavator for autonomous truck loading (199 citations) and a semi-autonomous ship paint-stripping system, demonstrating his commitment to practical real-world impact. His work on evolutionary approaches to robot configuration synthesis further reflects his breadth across design methodology. With research spanning nearly two decades and hundreds of citations, Bares remains a defining figure in field and extreme-terrain robotics.