Robotics

I've got professional experience in robotics hardware R&D and robotics software development. Some of my recent technical interests in robotics are in the areas of dynamic manipulation and reactive planning with redundant manipulators. I'm also interested in the relationship between human intuition and robotic planning.

Pinocchio CLIK solution visualization

Iterative numerical inverse kinematics solution visualization using Pinocchio and Meshcat

Polarworks

At Polarworks I was doing some interesting work to make programming and control of industrial robot manipulators more intuitive and powerful. My main technical responsibility was to design and implement a cross-platform motion control library largely from scratch using C++ and Eigen. I worked on:

  • Real-time reactive obstacle avoidance
  • Manipulator dynamics
  • Gazebo simulations
  • Open-source robotics library selection and prototyping
  • Real-time teleoperation demonstrations using ROS 2 and MoveIt Servo
and more.

In addition to software development and technical implementation activities, I helped lead a transition to Agile development practices, worked on overall product strategy and product roadmapping, and did hands-on work to debug and derisk robotic installations for client engagements.

Pliant Energy - Velox Robot

My former role at Pliant Energy Systems focused on developing a propulsion concept for coastal robotics that uses undulating, flexible fins instead of spinning blades. We secured non-dilutive funding for this R&D work via a substantial two year+ contract with the Office of Naval Research in response to a BAA opportunity.

Velox GIF

Pliant Energy Systems' Velox amphibious robot GIF-ified by Reddit

I was the PI for the Velox ONR R&D project and was heavily involved in all aspects of the robotic system development including:

  • Project technical administration and technical reporting
  • Actuator selection and performance characterization
  • Reproducible analysis of performance test data using Jupyter notebooks
  • All electronic hardware design and substantial mechanical system design
  • Electromechanical system prototyping and system integration
  • Nonlinear finite element modeling of flexible fin thrusters, other flexible mechanisms, and entire robots using Abaqus
  • All embedded firmware development, ROS integration, and control software development
  • Novel control system development for biomorphic finned robots
  • Computer vision development for navigation and maneuvering experiments
I've got years of experience in SolidWorks and Abaqus dynamic modeling of nonlinear mechanical systems. I'm proficient in Python and C and I heavily automated Pliant's simulation workflow with in-house Python software. Automation of model setup and simulation post-processing enabled us to carry out rich parametric studies on soft robotic component performance.

From Pliant Energy Systems' YouTube channel

I'm no longer working full-time at Pliant but I'm still involved in in an advisory capacity with the future development of the next-generation system, The Pliant Energy Systems C-Ray.

Press

There was substantial media attention around the Velox project. Some media hits: