about 3 hours ago
Responsibilities
- Improve the architecture, algorithms, real-time performance, testing, and maintainability of the controls stack.
- Advance whole-body control for wheeled-base and bipedal robots, coordinating locomotion with upper-body manipulation.
- Address high-impact problems such as learning-based hand control, mobile manipulation, teleoperation, and estimation.
- Translate model-based and learning-based methods from simulation through hardware bring-up and deployment.
- Improve robot speed, payload, reliability, and safety with measurable results.
- Set technical direction for the controls stack and influence the roadmap across adjacent robotics teams.
- Mentor engineers through design reviews, code reviews, and engineering best practices.
- Collaborate with hardware, systems, and reinforcement learning teams on system-level solutions and diagnosis.
Requirements
- Deep knowledge of kinematics, dynamics, state estimation, and optimization/control theory.
- Proven expertise in whole-body control, including WBC/OSC, QP-based control, or MPC, for floating-base legged or mobile wheeled systems.
- Hands-on experience applying learning-based control or reinforcement learning to robotics, including training in simulation.
- Breadth across mobile manipulation, dexterity or hand control, and teleoperation.
- Strong real-time C++ and Python software engineering skills for robotic systems.
- Industry experience developing production-grade controllers and validating or deploying algorithms on physical robot hardware.
- MS or PhD in Robotics, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
- At least 8 years of relevant industry experience in robot controls, or at least 4 years with a PhD, with a track record of getting controllers working on physical hardware.
- Preferred experience includes shipping controllers to a production fleet or market at scale, dexterous or in-hand manipulation, legged locomotion, or safety-critical and certified software.
About Apptronik
Apptronik is a human-centered robotics company developing AI-powered robots to support humanity in every facet of life. Our humanoid robot, Apollo, is designed to collaborate thoughtfully with humans—initially in critical industries such as manufacturing and logistics, with future applications in healthcare, the home, and beyond. Apollo is the culmination of nearly a decade of development, drawing on Apptronik’s extensive work on 15 previous robots, including NASA’s Valkyrie robot. Apptronik started out of the Human Centered Robotics Lab at the University of Texas at Austin and has more than 350 employees. Learn more at apptronik.com