Robotics

Velox

My current role at Pliant Energy Systems focuses on the development of 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.

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

I'm the PI for the ongoing ONR R&D project and am 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've heavily automated our simulation workflow with in-house Python software for model setup and simulation post-processing, enabling us to carry out rich parametric studies on soft robotic component performance.

From Pliant Energy Systems' YouTube channel

Press

The Velox robot has recently attracted substantial media attention. Some media hits:

• New Atlas
• Reuters Video Story
• IEEE Robot Fridays
• dezeen
• designboom
• Digital Trends
• Hackaday
• Gizmodo