About Me

Background

tl;dr globetrotting mechatronics engineer, working at AbCellera on high-throughput single cell screening robots.

Originally from Ottawa, I graduated in 2015 from the University of Waterloo with a BASc in Mechatronics Engineering. How aspects of a complex system interact with one another is a source of endless fascination for me, so a multi-disciplinary program combining the best of mechanical, electrical and software engineering into one was a natural choice. After graduation I moved to Zurich to join Rapyuta Robotics and start writing cool software for quadrotors and other robots. In order to get closer to the action, I moved to Tokyo to help develop Rapyuta’s outdoor autonomous quadrotor drone. Over the next years, we made a lot of progress (including autonomous landing and charging, a project I had opportunity to lead). In 2018, change beckoned and I moved to Munich, Germany to join Magazino and work on revolutionizing logistics for warehouses and assembly lines with Toru and Soto. In 2020, I moved to Vancouver, Canada to join AbCellera and develop robots for antibody discovery.

Posts

• Circumnavigation
• New TORUs in Krefeld
• Time Flies When You're Having Fun
• Drone and Docking Station Design
• Quadrotor Acrobatics
• Autonomous Boat Project
• Real-time Estimation of Electric Vehicle Mass Using CAN Bus Signals
• Simulation of Cutting Forces during Milling
• Extended Kalman Filter for State Estimation of an Omni-wheel Vehicle
• CNC Machining of an Aluminum Crest
• Hello World

Projects

• New TORU Iteration
• TORU Autonomous Mobile Shoebox Handling Robot
• Drone and Docking Station Design
• Quadrotor Acrobatics
• Autonomous Boat Project
• Real-time Estimation of Electric Vehicle Mass Using CAN Bus Signals
• Simulation of End Mill Cutting Forces
• Extended Kalman Filter for Omni-wheel Vehicle State Estimation
• CNC Machining of a Crest

Circumnavigation

It’s been almost a year since my last post and a lot has happened. As Sam Altman puts it so well, the days are long but the decades are short.

When CoVid-19 turned the entire world on its head in 2020, I took the opportunity to return to Canada. Moving from the center of Europe to the west coast of North America in the middle of a pandemic wasn’t trivial, but considering this was my fourth international move since graduating in 2015, I’m somewhat practiced at it.

New TORUs in Krefeld

Working on the hardware side of things, the slower iteration cycles (compared to software) can sometimes be frustrating. One of my major projects at Magazino is developing our Shoebox Handler, a multi-axis suction array based manipulator, and making any changes to it involves tons of testing and coordination with our software teams, as this manipulator is our interface to the rest of the world.

Over the course of more than a year, we’ve been working to improve the design of the Shoebox Handler by integrating better sensors, making assembly easier and bringing down costs through DFM changes. I’m happy to say that the effort finally paid off and the new hardware is live at the customer site!