index / experience

04 — Experience

Experience

Six years shipping automation that runs in production — from commissioning AGV lines on the factory floor to writing the navigation stack for an autonomous farming robot.

Salin 247 Inc.

Autonomous agriculture · Ames, IA · 2024 — Present

35% lower tracking error 75% faster planning 2 days → 2 hrs onboarding

Robotics Software Engineer

Aug 2025 — Present · Full-time
  • Build the navigation and control stack for a production autonomous farming robot — path-tracking controllers (MPC, PID, Stanley), velocity profiling, and coordination logic tying planter operations to vehicle dynamics.
  • Wrote the integration layer between the robot's industrial PLC and the ROS navigation stack over Modbus TCP, carrying bidirectional telemetry, motion commands, and safety interlocks.
  • Contributed the graph-based mission planner that generates multi-row field paths with Dijkstra search and Reeds-Shepp curves.
  • Containerized the ROS development environment with Docker for both Jetson (ARM64/CUDA) and x86 simulation, cutting new-developer onboarding from two days to two hours.

Robotics Engineer

Sep 2024 — May 2025 · Part-time
  • Prototyped a Model Predictive Controller to replace legacy PID, cutting cross-track and heading error 35% — the controller now runs in production.
  • Led UI/UX for the consumer-facing web and mobile apps.
  • Set project requirements and success metrics for external contractors, and ran technical interviews for computer-vision interns from CMU, Iowa State, and Georgia Tech.

Robotics Engineer — Intern

May 2024 — Aug 2024
  • Designed a full-stack path-planning architecture that cut computation time 75% for 150-acre field coverage, with a proprietary graph-generation algorithm and a Reeds-Shepp RRT* collision-avoidance module.
  • Modeled a dual Ackermann steering system and built a Pygame emulator driven by a ROS remote controller.
  • Prototyped bounding-box detection with YOLOv8 and helped train an object detector with Detectron2.

Quest Industrial a brand of ProMach

Industrial automation · Monroe, WI · 2019 — 2023

170% line efficiency 70% throughput gain Superior Performance Award ×2

Industrial Automation Engineer

Oct 2020 — May 2023
  • Programmed a Rocla counterbalance AGV to move pallets up to 2,000 kg, surveying reflector positions across a 1,200 m² facility to 0.2-inch tolerance and tuning travel paths for 25% higher throughput than projected; paired it with a Fanuc M-410iC/110 palletizer.
  • Built a lunch-box line with ISHIDA precision weighers (120 products/min), a state machine coordinating manipulator handshakes, and a Fanuc 2D-vision + SR-3iA SCARA cell — tuning two Fanuc M-710iD/50M arms from 50 to 85 cases/min (70% gain).
  • Standardized a FactoryTalk View ME HMI across sister companies and prototyped cloud version control for Studio 5000 projects, projected to save $21,000 a year.
  • Earned the Superior Performance Award two years running and mentored three junior engineers on Rockwell PLC best practices.

Field Service Engineer

Aug 2019 — Sep 2020
  • Led Quest's inaugural AGV project on a potato-chip line, lifting production-line efficiency up to 170% and replacing manual fork-truck transport.
  • Wrote an IEC 61131-3 precision PID steer/drive algorithm in Kollmorgen KAS and designed traffic-management logic for multi-AGV narrow-aisle environments.
  • Deployed Ewon and VNC remote access for off-site troubleshooting, programmed SICK microScan3 and TIM100 safety scanners, and integrated PLC-to-PLC handshakes over TCP/IP.