Skyler M.

self-directed projects

• ROS2 / Middleware technical lead. Advised the robot software org on architecture decisions, ROS2 integration, and best practices. • Participated in design discussions and provided guidance, software support and code reviews to the broader robot software team. • Responsible for maintaining iRobot’s internal versions of core ROS packages and its integration with iRobot’s applications. • Supported development efforts on the ROS2 team by improving docker container tooling for our benchmarks and developer tools. • Lead iRobot’s ROS distro migration from Iron to Jazzy: ◦ integrated iRobot's ROS customizations with upstream changes introduced in Jazzy. Performed on-hardware testing of iRobot’s ROS applications to validate. ◦ Migrated the robot SW stack, conan packages, and developer tooling from Python 3.8 to 3.12 to support Jazzy. ◦ Incorporated forward compatibility changes for packages that made use of C++ → Python bindings • Took the lead on middleware concerns after a change in company direction. Researched state-of-the-art, ran benchmarks on possible alternatives, and arranged a meeting with the best candidate. • Shared our (now open-sourced) benchmarking tool with Zettascale in an effort to further the development of rmw_zenoh. This allowed them to reproduce performance issues we identified, resulting in upstream fixes to the rmw. • Active participant in the ROS community representing iRobot’s concerns and contributing back benchmarks, code and PR reviews when able. • Contributed to the Callback Group Events Executor shipped in ROS 2 Lyrical Luth, which iterates on iRobot’s experimental EventsExecutor by adding support for multiple threads and simulation time. Performed executor benchmarks and identified and contributed fixes to rcl / rclcpp for memory leaks, crashes and deadlocks. • Position was affected by a restructuring following iRobot’s bankruptcy and subsequent acquisition by Picea.

Responsible for enhancing and maintaining robot software automation stack for line of wood reclamation / recycling machines • Implemented higher level autonomy and sensing software using ROS2 (rclpy) • Supported firmware for low level Clearcore microcontroller stack using embedded C++ • Wrote / upgraded API components for inverse kinematics, actuation, and wood conveyance used across several different types of robot hardware configurations • Feature owner for image-based workpiece jam detection and recovery • Implemented fault tolerance and recovery behaviors for automated induction coil “cooker” robot • Successfully leveraged simulation, mocking, unit and integration tests to prove out automation heuristics / algorithms, ahead of or in absence of readily available hardware • Managed PTP / network configuration for multi POE camera setup • Worked closely with hardware team to provide software support for robot description files, new sensors, actuator changes, system calibration, etc

Maintained and developed the onboard robot software stack for Tally, the autonomous inventory tracking robot scanning shelves and providing actionable insights in grocery stores around the globe. - Maintained software support for heterogeneous fleet of inventory scanning robots with differing hardware specs - worked extensively with ROS Navigation Stack (amcl/robot_localization/costmap_2d, etc) - significantly reduced nav-impacting RGBD sensor noise and latency - improved localization performance through LiDAR parameter tuning and introduced basic historical localization / nav performance metrics to our telemetry - implemented and validated new robot behaviors which improved autonomy and reduced "indecisive" navigation - improved stability/reliability/compute footprint of various nav sensor drivers including LiDAR, odometry, depth cameras and IMU - improved compute performance of nav sensors through porting legacy python code to C++ and taking advantage of intraprocess threading models (ROS Nodelets) - Assisted the hardware and field teams in debugging various robot issues and assessing the root cause - Wrote instrumentation / provided software support in automating some necessary setup processes for mass Tally production

Member of robot software algorithms team responsible for writing production C++ software for the Neato D8/D9/D10 consumer robot vacuum cleaner line. Implemented and tested robot software both in simulation and on robot hardware under real time constraints. Contributed to various parts of the autonomy stack including a turret LiDAR based laser line and corner extractor, corner cleaning behavior, and robot error state management.

Key contributor on the Velodyne Software R&D team developing LiDAR-centric computer vision and perception algorithms for ADAS. Implemented 3D kalman filter based multi-object tracker module in C++. Communication with the vehicle was handled through ROS, while different stages of the pipeline used ZMQ/protobuf. The tracker was a major part of the Vella AEB/FCW System, which was demonstrated at CES 2020.

Headed R&D project to build an experimental trajectory optimization and planning system using statistical data analysis tools and user-generated trajectories Coordinated data collection runs around the San Jose and Alameda offices

lab assistant for digital logic design class

Specialization in Machine Intelligence. Active member of multiple robotics projects including an MIT-Racecar platform based autonomous vehicles / computer vision course, and the VEX-U Competition, where our team POLY-1 won the Judges Award at the 2018 World Championship.

Associate of Arts degree received while taking Dual Enrollment/AP classes in High School.