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<h1><a href="/{{ site.baseurl }}roscon24">NEW: ROSCon 2024 Talk Information</a></h1>

<h1>Welcome</h1>
Over the past decade I've built a number of cool robots. A few of them have even done some
useful stuff. This page is a quick overview of my work, check out the
<a href="/{{ site.baseurl }}blog">blog</a> for more detailed write ups.<br />
<br />
I'm currently on sabbatical.<br/>
<br />
I was most recently the <i>Director of Research and Development</i>
at <a href="https://www.cobaltrobotics.com">Cobalt Robotics</a> where I led the design
of their second generation robots and rearchitected their navigation planners,
among other projects.<br />
<br />
<img width="360" src="/{{ site.baseurl }}assets/images/fetch.jpg" style="float:right; margin: 10px;" />
I was previously CTO at Fetch Robotics (2014-2017). I led the design and implementation
of software and electronics for the Fetch and Freight robots. These platforms won the
Material Handling Institute (MHI) Best New Innovation Award at MODEX 2016. I was a major
contributor to a number of software milestones including the development of key firmware
components, secure bootloaders, hand-eye calibration, and high-level demonistrations of
mobility and manipulation that are still part of the research product.<br />
<br />
<img width="280" src="/{{ site.baseurl }}assets/images/ubr1.jpg" style="float: left; margin: 10px;" />
During my time as CTO of Unbounded Robotics (2013-2014), I led the design of the
software and electrical systems for the UBR-1 robot platform.
Unbounded didn't make it past the seed round, but we did release some code on
<a href="https://github.com/unboundedrobotics">GitHub</a>.<br />
<br />
Unbounded Robotics was a spin-off from Willow Garage, a famed robotics incubator that
I had the honor of working at for almost two years. During my time at Willow Garage
I developed a number of software packages. These include the generic 
<a href="https://github.com/ros-perception/calibration">calibration</a> package,
the turtlebot arm, and
<a href="https://github.com/ros-drivers/rosserial">rosserial</a> (which, for all
my best attempts, refuses to die).<br />
<br />
<img width="280" src="/{{ site.baseurl }}assets/images/maxwell.jpg" style="float: right; margin: 10px;" />
Prior to Willow Garage, I was a graduate student at State University at New York, Albany.
As part of my master's thesis I built a low-cost mobile manipulator, Maxwell. Maxwell
won the 2011 AAAI Small Scall Manipulation Challenge. I've made a number of
<a href="/{{ site.baseurl }}tag/maxwell">number of blog posts</a> and a
<a href="/{{ site.baseurl }}assets/papers/2011-maxwell.pdf">RoboGames paper</a> detailing Maxwell.<br />
<br />
I've also built a number of hobby robots <a href="/{{ site.baseurl }}tag/smaldog">SMALdog (sorta-maybe-almost-littledog)</a>
is a small ArbotiX-based walker that could <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKs31nOf8pY">jump</a>
[<a href="https://github.com/mikeferguson/smaldog">GitHub</a>].
I won the <a href="{{ site.baseurl }}/2009/04/12/viva-la-crate">2009 Trinity College Fire
Fighting Home Robot Contest</a> with a stupidly simple (and cheap) robot
[<a href="https://github.com/mikeferguson/crater">GitHub</a>]
[<a href="http://forums.trossenrobotics.com/tutorials/build-articles-130/build-a-fire-fighting-robot-3288/">Tutorial</a>].<br />
<br />
When I'm not building robots, I have a few too many other hobbies,
including woodworking and working on my farm here in NH.<br />
<br />
Here's a few tags to help you find some (hopefully) interesting reading material:<br />
{% include alltags.html %}