Project lead and sole mechanical engineer for data collection tool project.

• Designed an exoskeleton glove that constrains the human hand to the kinematics of a common off-the-shelf 3-finger gripper.

• Owned project from initial scoping of the problem to delivering hardware to the SW team that enabled their VLA policy development.

Modeled 3D printed plastic parts and CNC machined steel parts using CREO.

Conducted reviews for design, manufacturing, and integration as the glove was sensorized with joint encoders to track each degree of freedom.

Enabled data collection 87% faster than teleoperating the robot.

Built a miniaturized teleoperation leader arm to control a 6 degree-of-freedom follower arm.

• Accelerated arm and gripper development by learning quickly which objects are most challenging to pick up and which interfaces are most difficult to interact with.

Optimized the design to ultimately decrease weight by 57% and volume by 66% while maintaining the kinematics of the leader arm.

Debugged issues in bringing up the tele-op stack, including joint calibration, leader arm assembly, and actuator overheating.

Designed parts that mounted cameras to the Unitree G1’s head, chest, and wrists, enabling data collection for VLA policy development.

Iterated on the design for ease of assembly, camera stability while in use, and camera mounting repeatability.

Collaborated with the applied science team to decide on camera mounting locations to maximize environment visibility while minimizing robot performance degradation.

Defined quantitative grasp success metrics around stability and retention force, to be able to baseline grippers against each other. 

• Defined the test methodology and tested across grippers of different finger counts, to build confidence around our design compared to off-the-shelf grippers.

• Designed a CNC machined test fixture to capture grasp retention force.

Analyzed the results to influence design decisions for our custom gripper and started a new workstream focused on tools that can better control and understand the capabilities of multi-degree of freedom systems (Exoskeleton Glove for Data Collection Project).

Developed, designed, and assembled test fixtures to characterize off-the-shelf and in-house actuator designs. 

• Enabled closed-loop control on an existing text fixture to more accurately collect the majority of our key performance indicators (backlash, max torque, max speed, motor constant, etc.).

• Engineered a new test fixture to characterize output torsional stiffness, a metric vital for controlling the robot.