Husqvarna has a long and successful history of making robotic lawn mowers with their Automower lineup. This position has been a key part in the creation of a North American based team to develop a North American specific version of the Automower in the iQ series. This role has many facets from coordination between the Mechanical team (in Charlotte, NC) and the Software team (in Huskvarna, SWE) to the hands on assistance in creating test procedures / test unit tracking to the develop and tracking of the System Requirements.

Siera AI is developing an aftermarket vision-based safety system for forklifts that detects objects and pedestrians through the use of stereoscopic cameras and displays the information to the operator via an Android tablet with cloud connectivity and website based admin controls.As the first engineer at Siera with a testing background, I started the process of documenting the system's functionality into a DVP&R and explained the importance of maintaining a database of the testing results. I introduced the developers to data logging key functionality in the linux based systems to understand how the system was performing over time. I programmed tools that automated often used interactions with the linux and android systems that simplified flashing the linux system to where anyone in manufacturing can perform the task without copying and pasting commands into the terminal and a tool that simplified the programming of the android system from a 60 minute task per tablet to a 5 minute task per tablet. I introduced the development team to a new way of viewing the produced data to figure out where the biggest issues were and worked a methodical approach to improve that functionality.

Hyster-Yale used to be the number 1 forklift manufacturer in the world with their counter balanced lift trucks in the 1 to 9 ton range being developed at the Portland Design Center. The Engine System group was responsible for acquiring the base engine and integrating it into the chassis to meet customer, internal, supplier and governmental requirements. The internal combustion engines that I worked with were diesel, propane and bi-fuel (propane and gasoline).My role was that of test engineer and technician manager with many responsibilities above and beyond what was requested. As a team, we developed the initial prototypes with ICEs that were never designed to work in the older chassis, we proved functionality and upgraded to more production intent parts for initial validation. After several iterations, we brought in the engine suppliers’ application engineers and proved the feasibility of our designs via passing their Application Review process. This is all while completing internal DVP&R requirements, developing new features and maintaining the emission exemptions provided to the prototype engines by the EPA.As an individual working on process improvements, I developed and implemented test procedures and data processing methods that reduced one specific test from running 1 test on one truck in 4 days to running 20 of the same test on multiple trucks in 5 days. I worked with the facilities group to increase the capabilities of the test stands.The biggest individual task that I took on was the next generation data acquisition utilizing the SomatXR series from HBK. This included creating adapters from legacy instrumentation to the XR units and creating means of remotely viewing live data / modifying engine tunes while an operator was utilizing the lift trucks at capacity. After teaching the Engine Systems Test team, I worked with Instrumentation Group to acquire more XR hardware and taught the other teams how to utilize the system and many of its benefits.

This role was a Contract position through Technical Engineering Consultants.In the Advanced team of the Aero / Thermal department, my group took the flood of what if scenarios from the Brand / Marketing / Management and delivered feasibility of initial program requirements. After the initial calculations were done, the Advanced team coordinated the body designers / three dimensional CFD simulators / one dimensional road course simulators and gathered / validated the many inputs. As a member of the Aero / Thermal department, the team didn’t own any specific parts but owned the issues and had to coordinate the many parts groups to find solutions. When the pre-prototypes were stable enough, the programs were passed to the next team and prototypes were created. The majority of the programs that I worked on were plug-in hybrid or battery electric vehicles. In addition to quickly jumping between potential programs, the Advanced team was responsible for understanding and documenting the competitor vehicles and how they performed on the same test roads. This reverse engineering process was the area that I brought the most benefit to the Advanced team. I created a simplified process to test and document the many iterations to understand the competitive designs; I was also able to leverage my background in automotive to teach new engineers what and where to look for components and how to set up an instrumentation and test list for their competitive benchmarking.The last part of my role was to run a multi department committee that influenced, participated in or utilized the testing and documentation of electrified powertrains. The biggest takeaway from this committee was the necessity of documenting processes, documenting results, documenting lessons learned and most importantly, implementing changes based on the lessons learned. There is no reason to reinvent the wheel every program and every process can be made more efficient over time.

Formula SAE is a design competition aimed at Mechanical Engineering students to imagine, design, fabricate, validate and present a formula style race car. UNM FSAE is a three semester program that is an alternative to senior design and two electives where the students are engaged in a more business-oriented design environment. The complex system is divided into six subsystem teams and a management team to make sure the subsystems will work together, the vehicle is on schedule and within budget and that the budget fund-raising is bringing in enough funds. The 2014 team consisted of 17 students and the vehicle placed 11th overall out of 80 teams.The Aerodynamics subsystem includes the bodywork, front wing, rear wing and a profiled undertray. The goal was to create downforce to allow the vehicle to corner faster and to limit the amount of drag created. The components were created with CAD (SolidWorks) using a parametric system that could be manipulated by CAE (ModeFrontier) and tested using CFD (StarCCM+). The many designs were systematically sifted through to present the best few designs that were optimized for overall downforce and efficiency and provided a certain appearance for the vehicle. The final design was then fabricated in house using carbon fiber and Kevlar fabrics on CNC router cut negative molds for the wings and hand shaped positive molds for bodywork.