P2K: What does that mean on a day to day basis?

Edward W. Tunstel: When I come in I spend a lot of time in front of computers and in various laboratories where there are robot systems. What I do basically is I have quite a nice job where I get a chance to play with very expensive toys in terms of these robots. But these robots are very serious devices that we develop and try and use for space exploration.

P2K: What's the best thing about your job? What's the coolest thing about what you do?

Edward W. Tunstel: Just coming up with new ideas and actually getting to see those ideas work on something...some moving hardware.

P2K: What got you started? Was it a teacher or a book...was it a movie?

Edward W. Tunstel: When I was younger, I was quite interested in drawing actually...in art and I was interested in becoming an architect, but while in high school...I think in my junior year I went to a seminar where there were engineers and architects. And the engineers impressed me more with the types of things they did in their job and I got interested in mechanical engineering and actually designing and building things. And I studied that in college and also got interested that way in robotics and ended up studying electrical engineering as well.