Kevin Blankespoor

Kevin Blankespoor

VP of Controls & Autonomy at Boston Dynamics

Location
Greater Boston Area
Industry
Research
Current
  1. Google,
  2. Boston Dynamics
Previous
  1. Maxtor Corporation,
  2. Blueprint Automation
Education
  1. University of Colorado Boulder
Recommendations1 person has recommended Kevin
Websites
  1. Company Website
390 connections

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Summary

• Leadership: Systems engineering and technical leadership of projects requiring mechanical, electrical, software, and controls engineering.
• Robotics: Developing high degree-of-freedom robotic systems.
• Controls: Developing high performance real-time control systems.

Lead Controls and Autonomy Engineer for Humanoid Robots. Chief Engineer on the BigDog and LS3 Programs. Leads multi-discplinary team in development of legged robotic systems. Control Systems and Software Implementations. Degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Electrical Engineering. Experience in robotics, automation, disk drive design.

Specialties: Systems Engineering, Control Systems, Real Time Software, C++, Matlab, Systems Integration, Realtime Operating Systems (QNX, VxWorks), Frequency and State Space based Control Systems.

Experience

  • Senior Staff Roboticist

    Google
    – Present (2 years 6 months)Greater Boston Area
  • Vice President of Controls & Autonomy

    Boston Dynamics
    – Present (11 years 11 months)

    Lead of humanoid robotics behavior development including locomotion control, manipulation, and autonomy. Chief Engineer for the BigDog and LS3 Programs.

    Leads team of roboticists in mechanical, electrical, controls and software development of advanced legged robots. Develops and implements control systems for legged robotic systems.

  • Senior Electrical Engineer

    Maxtor Corporation
    (3 years 1 month)

    Developed control systems for hard disk drives. Implemented control algorithms in real-time firmware.

  • Project Manager

    Blueprint Automation
    (3 years 1 month)

    Project Manager, Mechanical Designer, and Sales Engineer for automated packaging systems.

Projects

Skills

Education

Publications

  • Autonomous navigation for BigDog

    Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2010 IEEE International Conference on

    BigDog is a four legged robot with exceptional rough-terrain mobility. In this paper, we equip BigDog with a laser scanner, stereo vision system, and perception and navigation algorithms. Using these sensors and algorithms, BigDog performs autonomous navigation to goal positions in unstructured forest environments. The robot perceives obstacles, such as trees, boulders, and ground features, and steers to avoid them on its way to the goal. We describe the hardware and software implementation of the navigation system and summarize performance. During field tests in unstructured wooded terrain, BigDog reached its goal position 23 of 26 runs and traveled over 130 meters at a time without operator involvement.

    Authors:

Recommendations

A preview of what LinkedIn members have to say about Kevin:

  • Kevin is an outstanding engineer and leader. He is able to handle many details while maintaining a clear focus on broader goals. He is consistently self-motivating. He also does an excellent job managing teams, creating and implementing improvements, and keeping projects moving forward. It is a pleasure to work with Kevin, and he is a key asset to our company.

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