• Matthew WeinFriday, February 6, 2026Print this page. • Sanderson, who served as one of the founding co-directors of Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute, died in December at his home in Florida. • Sanderson became a member of the CMU faculty in 1973 after earning his Ph.D. • from the university’s College of Engineering, where he went on to direct the Flexible Assembly Lab. • In 1979, he joined Raj Reddy and College of Engineering Dean Angel Jordan as an early leader of the nascent Robotics Institute. • “Our little team, with Art leading it, tackled all kinds of problems of extraordinary breadth and did really great work,” said Kevin Dowling (MCS 1984, SCS 1997), who worked in Sanderson’s lab, first as a CMU undergraduate and later as a staff member.

Article Summaries:

  • Arthur C. Sanderson, a founding co‑director of Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute, died in December at his Florida home at age 79. A 1973 CMU faculty member, he directed the Flexible Assembly Lab and helped launch the Robotics Institute with Raj Reddy and Dean Angel Jordan in 1979. After leaving CMU in 1987, he led Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s Electrical, Computer and Systems Engineering Department, co‑founded the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (serving as its first president), and later directed research at the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of State. Sanderson’s work advanced sensor‑based robotic control, AI planning, and autonomous vehicles, especially in underwater applications. He is survived by his wife, two children and four grandchildren.

Sources: