John Bares

Discovering his passion for robotics early, as a Civil Engineering undergraduate John helped design, build, and deploy the first robots to inspect the crippled Three Mile Island nuclear facility. After obtaining a PhD in Civil Engineering from CMU in 1991, his first role was with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries in Japan. Returning to CMU in 1994 with their faculty, he led the development of the Dante II rappelling robot that descended into and explored the inner crater of an Alaskan volcano and co-led development of an autonomous 25-ton earthmover for Caterpillar Inc.

John was appointed as Director of the National Robotics Engineering Center (NREC) in 1997, a joint venture between NASA and CMU. During his tenure at NREC, he oversaw the development of several state-of-the-art defense reconnaissance robots, automated mining and agricultural machines as well as innovative magnetic robots to remove paint from the hulls of large ships. Caring about the community, John was instrumental in creating NREC Robotics Academy, which educates K-12 students and teachers with multimedia curricula, teacher seminars, outreach programs, and competitions.

In 2010, John founded Carnegie Robotics LLC (CRL). While running NREC was a dream job, a desire burned to create a product oriented company, known for engineering excellence, while uniquely having the capabilities to design, manufacture, test, and calibrate its products under one roof. After leading CRL to a successful first five years, John stepped aside as the challenge of self-driving cars required his attention. As the founding Director of Uber ATG in 2015, John successfully placed self-driving vehicles on Pittsburgh roads in just 20 months. After overseeing one million miles of self-driven cars, John returned to the helm of CRL in 2017, where he is carrying out the original vision of a product oriented company.