AeroVironment acquired Planck Aerosystems in August 2022.

Planck Aero's ACE™ autonomous navigation system enables precision takeoff and landing of UAVs from mobile vehicles and vessels. Planck’s patented computer vision software technology allows commercial maritime and security professionals to fly responsive missions without the need for highly trained pilots. ACE is being used by numerous UAV manufacturers across a spectrum of aircraft, including multi-rotors, helicopters, and VTOL fixed-wing vehicles, and is the enabling technology on Planck’s AVEM™ tUAS.

Brain Corp is an artificial intelligence company specializing in the development of self-driving technology for mobile robots. Brain Corp partners with manufacturers of commercial equipment and consumer electronics, to convert their manually-operated products into autonomous robots. Autonomy powered by BrainOS® is making intelligent, helpful machines part of everyday life.▪ Led a multi-disciplinary team of 20+ engineers in a rapid development environment to integrate, deploy, and support complex robotic systems across a wide range of industrial, commercial, and consumer platforms in both domestic and international markets. ▪ Developed the autonomy system architecture and led hardware development to enable commercialization of Brain Corp's vision-based A.I. technology from research to production in 16 months. Design includes a custom single-board computer, onboard user interface, remote communication module, multi-modal sensors, and other electro-mechanical systems. ▪ Defined standardized electrical, mechanical, and software interfaces between autonomy system and mobile platform to enable rapid integration onto 8 OEM industrial machines in under 3 years. ▪ Derived system requirements and component specifications, RFPs, and SOWs to define and manage $750k in electrical and mechanical systems subcontracts.▪ Successful product development, OEM partnerships, and sales led to substantial growth from 25 employees to 150+ employees and $114 million in venture capital funding in under 4 years. ▪ Awarded industry "Innovation of the Year Award" and "Technology & Service Award" in 2016 and CONNECT's "Most Innovative New Product Award" in 2017.

▪ Multi-user web-based real estate investment tools that leverage online technologies and data to quickly identify the 3-sigma highest return passive-income properties in San Diego County.▪ Automated system generates highly accurate single-family and multi-unit rental price estimates based on more than 3,000,000 (and counting) online rental ads over the past 5 years. ▪ Successfully used by investors to purchase properties with higher than 11% capitalization rate and 80% cash-on-cash return (average capitalization rate in San Diego is 3%-5%). ▪ Web server uses PHP, cURL, and MySQL databases on the back-end and JavaScript, AJAX, and jQuery on the front-end; incorporating Google maps, Google geocoding, and Zillow APIs to allow users to quickly locate and evaluate high return properties from thousands of listings.▪ Automated data collection uses RSS feeds, APIs, and HTML regular expression data parsing.

▪ Designed the high-precision helium pressurization control system for Virgin Galactics’s SpaceShipTwo hybrid rocket motor; including modes definition, failure modes analysis, estimation and control laws, gas dynamics and control system modeling and analysis, and software implementation which has enabled successful powered-flight tests of the world’s first space tourism vehicle.▪ Technical lead on numerous satellite and launch vehicle proposals worth over $40 million for contracts with DARPA, NASA, NSROC, ORS, Army, and other commercial companies.▪ Led team of engineers in developing the flight software used on a successful launch of SNC’s ARCHER sounding rocket; implemented in C, C++, and Java on a ruggedized PC/104 linux stack. ▪ Solely responsible for end-to-end attitude EKF navigation design, Matlab analysis, C++ flight implementation, integrated hardware testing, and launch support for ORS’s Trailblazer spacecraft.▪ Reported to the Director of Propulsion when managing development of SNC’s proprietary hybrid rocket motor ballistics simulation software that models the fluid/gas dynamics, fluid properties (NIST Refprop) combustion properties (ProPEP), and fuel/nozzle regression to accurately predict motor performance during 70+ hot-fire tests for SpaceShipTwo and SNC’s DreamChaser.▪ Conducted launch vehicle stage optimization and trajectory design using OTIS optimization tools, Missile DATCOM aerodynamic data, and Matlab dynamic models for DARPA’a ALASA, Stratolaunch’s ALV, Sandia’s SuperStrypi, Army’s SWORDS, and NSROC’s launch vehicles.▪ GNC subsystem lead for AFRL’s ANGELS spacecraft; responsible for managing requirements specification, modes definition, component trades, and knowledge/control budgets. ▪ Conducted a flexible-body Fourier analysis of reaction wheel disturbances with NASTRAN flexible-body modes to verify conformance to MDA’s DSE jitter requirement.

▪ Thesis research on temporal inference for Probabilistic Concurrent Constraint Automata; formalizing a novel approximate belief state filter to diagnose complex systems.▪ Prepared and delivered technology reviews to NASA Ames and NASA JPL managers and assisted in writing NASA Intelligent Systems proposals for $1.9 million grants.

▪ Performed Matlab analysis to verify feasibility of achieving PowerSail’s sun acquisition and sun tracking requirements using a controlled 2-axis and 3-axis, out-of-track mounted ball joint.▪ Generated a non-principal axis, gravity gradient perturbation module for multiple spacecraft using quaternions and a Runge-Kutta numerical integrator in C++ to set the foundation for an AFRL spacecraft dynamics testbed.

▪ Updated the Slit Sun Sensor User’s Guide for SpaceWay and verified implementation of the Algorithm Design Description for the GOES control software with the ADA flight software.

▪ Standardized flight software analysis tools to work on every A2100 satellite, increasing software reuse across platforms and decreasing development costs. ▪ Developed graphical user interfaces using Xcessory Builder in Motif.

▪ Converted a serial ecological simulation (MODSPUR) into a parallel program using Message Passing Interface (MPI) in Fortran 77, effectively increasing the performance by 256 times.