I have been closely collaborating with engineers out in San Francisco to design, optimize and control an soft robot. I spent the summers out with them at their company. I had several projects assigned to me during this time:1. I was in charge of designing multi-objective optimization tools to choose optimal parameters of an inflatable arm (link lengths, base mounting position). This arm was later built and put on a real rover at NASA Ames Research Center. Part of the algorithm I wrote examined the dexterous work space of sample robot designs. For an example of a 3D scan of a robot's workspace containing this information, see https://youtu.be/pqXF-ymJidk.2. I was in charge of designing a path planner that found smooth joint motions allowing our robots to traverse desired end effector paths. My path planner was formulated as a quadratic program (QP) that allowed efficient solve times in CVXGEN and/or CVXOPT. It was implemented on real hardware and enabled a pneumatic robot to paint walls smoothly. An example of a path generated by this algorithm can be found at https://youtu.be/HHf0B43luIs and https://youtu.be/KPhWVgrnhBk. These videos show an arm mounted to a rover picking up a rock to its side and placing it under its base.In addition to taking charge of these assignments I aided another employee in designing a real-time pose estimation system, capable of localizing a robot's position with respect to fiducial tags placed at its base. I designed and fabricated mounting hardware and also spent some time characterizing cameras, lenses, and fiducial libraries to optimize our vision system.

It was a privilege to be mentored daily by Dr. Ivo Babuska, an internationally renown mathematician noted for his contributions to the field of finite element analysis. Under his mentorship I worked for 8 hours daily using MATLAB to develop and analyze mathematical models of the elasticity of fibrous materials. I learned to manipulate big data sets and employed Matlab's powerful visualization software packages to communicate the results of my analysis to Dr. Babuska and his collaborators. It was really exciting to work with professional researchers in a challenging research field.

Collaborating with a team of graduate and undergraduate researchers, I studied and coded many of the mathematical formulations central to isogeometric analysis in C++ and MATLAB. I learned about advanced technologies driving analysis and design including CAD (NURBS, T-Splines), FEA, and object-oriented programming. The figure below is an example of output from a GUI program I wrote during this time that constructed spline-based surfaces from user defined control points.

I worked with two other instructors to provide intensive training for volunteer representatives of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. We worked with groups of 2-8 students for nine-week periods, immersing them in the Slovak language and coaching them on effective teaching methods. By the end of their stay, these volunteers could carry on a conversation in Slovak, organize effective lesson plans and teach in Slovak effectively. As a teacher, I learned how to adapt to the needs of my students and communicate clearly in a challenging and highly-rewarding environment. I was also hired during this time to continue work on a Slovak language training book. Near the end of my employment, I finished the first draft of a 200 page manual using Adobe InDesign. This manual is used today by volunteers to aid them in mastering the principles of the Slovak Language.