Joshua James Email & Phone Number

Startup based on thesis work. Variety of roles ranging from business to PCB design, to custom actuator and gearbox design, to modeling, control, and planning software

Houston, Texas Area

I was the primary software developer and robot operator for TRACLabs'​ DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) team. We started as a track B team (funded and required to use the Atlas humanoid robot), and placed 4th/9 teams at the Virtual Robotics Challenge (VRC, first stage of the DRC), 6th/16 at the DRC Trials, and 9th/23 at the DRC Finals. My contributions included:• Software architecture design for the Atlas humanoid robot using ROS nodes and actionlib• A controller-switching system for safe transitions between controllers in different domains• A template-based executor for sequenced object-centric robot behaviors• Behavior designs for completing many of the competition tasks• A goal-space motion planner for sequences of locomotion and manipulation actions• A "prophecy"​ visualization for displaying future complex plan sequences for user verification• A jacobian-based IK solver supporting Goal-region manipulation planning• A simulated-annealing-based IK solver supporting Goal-region manipulation planning• A footstep planner for locomotion, both on flat ground and cinderblock terrain• A fast point cloud compression algorithm using multiple projection planes• A model-based sliding-mode observer with synchronized pos, vel, and acc estimates• An efficient recursive dynamics compensator for the upper body• A low level adaptive sliding mode joint position controller• An algorithm for generating feedforward terms for Atlas’ actuators• A ROS-message-based shared memory system for fast, low latency communication• A driver node for interfacing to AtlasSome of the code I wrote for this project is publicly available at the links below.

Houston, Texas Area

Created dynamic window control variant with fourth weight for oscillation removal.Developed a local planner and smoother with carroting and exploration.Wrote a robot footprint polygon calculator based on meshes posed by ROS tf tree updates.

Austin, Texas Area

Brought the MAGIC system from a concept to a detailed design plan.Defined functionality, specifications, and constraints for the MAGIC system.Designed general algorithms for gesture acquisition and system extendability.Developed tunable heuristics for hand shape matching.Implemented Kinect-based image acquisition and classification subsystem using OpenCV.

Austin, Texas Area

Developed R plotting library for generating complex charting objects.Wrote scripts to measure and display several key performance indicators.

Austin, Texas Area

Designed and built the electrical system for the robot.Programmed microcontrollers as interfaces to sensors and actuators.Co-wrote several ROS nodes for communication and control.

Austin, Texas Area

Debugged experimental smart badge system using Keil uVision.Wrote test cases and provided interface to my module.Interacted with international development team.

Austin, Texas Area

Designed and coded an algorithm capable of solving both challenges.Used Player/Stage to simulate the competition and test our control code.

Master Of Science (Ms), Mechanical Engineering

Dynamic systems and control, modular robot control, distributed whole-body control

Bs, Electrical Engineering, Robotics, Embedded Systems, 3.99

Activities and Societies: IEEE Robotics and Automation Society, Eta Kappa Nu - Electrical and Computer Engineering Honor Society, IEEE