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Formation Control Testbed (FCT)
Task Manager
Jason Keim
 Jason Keim received his BSBME from the University of Southern California in 2002 and MSME from California State University, Los Angeles, with emphasis in rigid body dynamics and control. In 2002, Jason joined the Guidance and Control Analysis Group at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. In that time, JasonÕs primary focus has been the development and validation of formation flight algorithms and technologies for missions such as NASA Starlight, TPF and DARPA F6. Additionally, he has contributed to the autonomous surface operations of the Mars Science Laboratory, data processing and trajectory reconstruction for the Autonomous Landing and Hazard Avoidance Technology program, and other research and technology development programs. Currently, Jason oversees JPLÕs Formation Flight Technology Laboratory.
Team Members
Asif Ahmed
 Asif Ahmed has worked in the area of spacecraft guidance and control at JPL for over twenty years. He worked in the areas of spacecraft controls and system identification research, as well as, on G&C system development for a number of flight projects including Mars Pathfinder, Cassini, Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM), Spitzer, StarLight, and Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF)-Interferometer. Asif had key roles across the entire G&C development process, including G&C system design, algorithm development, modeling and simulation, distributed real-time software development, and hardware I&T.
In recent years, Asif was the Formation Controls Architect and G&C Lead for the two-spacecraft StarLight mission, and more recently, the Formation Controls Technology Lead for the TPF-Interferometer mission. In this role, he conceived and led the development, implementation and deployment of Formation Control Testbed (FCT) to support the Formation Flying G&C technology development and demonstration.
Currently, Asif is leading the Space Interferometer Mission (SIM) Pointing & Control team.
Asif has a BSAE from Wichita State University in 1981, and a MSEE from Caltech in 1987.
Joel Shields
 Joel Shields is a Senior member of the Guidance and Control Analysis Group at the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory. He received his B.S. degree in Applied
Mechanics from U.C. San Diego in 1990 and his M.S. and Ph.D.
degree in Control Systems from U.C. Berkeley in 1993 and 1997,
respectively. His dissertation research was on control of exercise
machines. He is the holder of a patent based on this work. Upon
graduation, Dr. Shields worked as a consultant before joining the
technical staff at JPL. Dr. Shields has extensive experience in
design of mechatronic systems, system identification, adaptive
control, precision servo control, and real time applications of
control systems. At JPL he has worked on precision pointing for
space based interferometry, sensing technologies, and formation flying.
Daniel Scharf
 Daniel Scharf is a Senior Engineer in the Guidance and Control Analysis Group at JPL. His work focuses on multi-spacecraft guidance, estimation, and control, adaptive and distributed control, and astrodynamics with 40+ publications in these areas. He is currently the Lead Engineer for TPF-I Formation Flying, including the 6DOF, multi-robot Formation Control Testbed. He was the Deputy Cluster Flight Manager for a DARPA F6 team and has also been the PI for a multi-year internal R&D effort focused on formation estimation, communication, and sensing, and responsible for designing and implementing (i) multi-stage controllers for optical delay lines in formation interferometers and (ii) robust adaptive controllers for the AFRL-sponsored MACE II flight experiment aboard the International Space Station. He holds a B.S.E.M. from the Univ. of Minnesota in Aerospace Engineering and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from the Univ. of Michigan. He is a member of IEEE and a Senior Member of AIAA.
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