Nicholas Paine

In this role, I researched the realization of electrically actuated legged robots capable of dynamic locomotion and explosive movements. I developed the UT-SEA, a new electric series elastic actuator with properties ideal for legged robots such as high power output, high efficiency, small size and weight, force controllability, and impact tolerance. Series elastic actuator (UT-SEA): http://youtu.be/KaQ6lx3ifPU By using high-performance model-based control techniques, I increased the empirical power output of this actuator beyond other electrical series elastic actuators, achieving 423W/kg in one test. UT-SEA v2 high power test: http://youtu.be/wzOfcHTdjRk I spent more than a year working at NASA-JSC with my lab from UT on the design and control of the Valkyrie humanoid robot. My main contribution in this work was the design and implementation of controllers for Valkyrie's series elastic actuators. Development of Valkyrie: http://youtu.be/MkZWjgzhCrs Early on in my graduate studies, I developed a custom BLDC motor controller with integrated torque sensing and high bandwidth current control. I also created an embedded system to interface pneumatic muscles to a linux pc. Custom motor controller: http://youtu.be/z51queyw21k Pneumatic muscle system: http://youtu.be/PlSXSSrXpxs My responsibilities for this work included: Mechanical design and assembly, embedded system design, sensor/actuator interfacing and filtering, software development, real-time control, system dynamics and modeling, control design, procurement, mentoring, publishing

I helped found the Pharos Robotics Lab in the EE department at UT. I improved the original Proteus robot prototype and built 40 of them to use as a robotic/wireless-node testbed. This work led to numerous graduate and undergradute research projects as described in the Pharos website. Responsibilities: Budget allocation, procurement, microcontroller firmware development, pcb design, linux software development, mechanical assembly, system level testing and debugging, gps navigation, inertial/odometry navigation, management of undergraduate researchers, product delivery and instruction to external research institution Proteus Robot: http://proteus.ece.utexas.edu/ Pharos Lab: http://pharos.ece.utexas.edu/wiki Multi robot patrol: http://youtu.be/fQyhJimre-o GPS navigation: http://youtu.be/JnsNdCof02Y

Schematic capture, pcb layout, part procurement, assembly, bring up and testing of multi-layered boards for system level testing and verification

Computer motherboard testing and debugging

Engineering fellowship Guest lecturer for Mechatronics (ME340) Guest lecturer for Topics in Human Centered Robotics (ME397)

Engineering fellowship

First place senior design competition: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vC5nzPTDHuQ Third place embedded system design competition