Daniel Theobald

Theobald is the principal inventor of the Battlefield Extraction-Assist Robot, or BEAR, a humanoid robot able to navigate winding paths, buildings and stairs to rescue casualties from urban, forested and other war zones.

He serves as President and Chief Technology Officer of Vecna Technologies, a company he co-founded in 1998. With experience in software architecture, artificial intelligence, electromechanical engineering and mobile robotics, his interests and expertise include robot control and mobility systems, object-oriented design, enterprise system architecture and system integration. His graduate work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory included developing web-based control algorithms for a robotic Mars explorer, a progenitor of the famed robotic Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity.

Daniel is the recipient of the Henry Ford II Scholar Award and the Hertz Foundation Award, as well as a fellowship from the National Science Foundation.