Anthony Downs (Tony) has worked at NIST since 2005 on the Urban Search & Rescue Robotics Standards project for DHS, as well as various DARPA Projects including DARPA ASSIST, DARPA TransTac Evaluations, and was one of the main application evaluators for the DARPA Transformative Apps (TransApps) project. He has been part of the team responsible for creating and iterating on the designs of the Emergency Robots Test Methods as they make their way through the ASTM Standards Process, designing the 3D CAD models of the test methods. He was a key player in running the Ultra-Wide Band (UWB) tracking system for both the Emergency Robots project as well as for Data Collections by the ARL CTA project.
Tony is currently the Co-Project Leader for the Agility Performance of Robotic Systems project within the Measurement Science for Manufacturing Robots Program and is the Lead for the Agile Robotics for Industrial Automation Competition (ARIAC), an annual Prize competition currently run in simulation. Tony is also the Division Safety Representative for the Intelligent Systems Division (735), and has recently joined the EL Diversity, Inclusivity, and Belonging (DIB) Council as one of two division 735 representatives.