Who I Am

I’m an aerospace & robotics nerd who is passionate about building autonomous systems that accomplish difficult tasks. Most recently I’ve led engineer teams to develop complex robotic systems for bleeding edge agriculture applications.

• Director of Mechanical Engineer @ Bowery Farming 2022-2023

• Head of Hardware @ Traptic Inc 2017-2022

• Engineer, Specialty Analysis @ UTC Aerospace Systems 2014-2017

Stuff I’ve Done

Deimos is Traptic’s 5th generation robotic strawberry harvester. It was developed to commercialize Traptic’s technology. The platform was designed under an aggressive timeline (sub 3 months) with a small team of in-house engineers.

Notable Features

• 8 independent pick cores, each featuring a 6-axis robot arm, cameras and gripper

• Self propelled diesel-hydraulic vehicle with 4 steering/propulsion modes (sideways for harvest, lengthwise for traveling on roads, crab steering in either mode, and stationary carousel for sharp in-place turns)

• Powerful LED Strobe lighting and stereo cameras to overpower ambient light and provide high quality, accurate, consistent imagery

Ceres was the previous generation of Traptic’s machines. It featured 2 pick cores that used “delta” 4-axis robots with under-actuated belted grippers. Ceres was tractor mounted and powered by the tractor PTO.

UCSD Autonomous Airplane Team (AUVSI sUAS)

While at UCSD I was heavily involved with student engineering groups. The UCSD Autonomous Airplane Team (now TritonUAS) competes each year in an international autonomous search and identify competition held on a Naval Air Station in Maryland. The highly multidisciplinary student group designs, builds, and tests custom small Unmanned Aircraft Systems which can autonomously search an area for targets. While I was on the team, we built a completely new system which included a custom composite airframe, high resolution gimbaled camera system, on-board processing, long range high bandwidth communications, and software/firmware to run it all.

I’ve loved things that fly as long as I can remember

As a kid I always made paper airplanes and would make mashup frankenplanes from multiple party favor styrofoam gliders. In college I took up model aviation and built RC planes and “drones” and flew them every chance that I had. After graduating (and saving a bit of money) I started flight training to obtain a private pilots license. I soloed, did my cross country flights, but was stopped short when I moved up north to join Traptic. I look forward to finishing my PPL when I can devote more free time.