Profile picture, Niagara

Most recently, I spent nearly two years at Fyto working on large-scale crop harvesting robots for a new type of sustainable, high-protein crop. Contributing to a sustainable agricultural project was incredibly rewarding, and I hope to return to this field in the future.

I completed a two-year master’s program at the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU MSR). I worked in the Field Robotics Center with George Kantor on agricultural robotics applications, focusing on outdoor imaging and reconstruction.

Prior to CMU, I spent six years at RightHand Robotics, a Boston area startup focused on piece-picking automation. It was a privilege to watch this startup grow up, as well as a great learning experience.

I’m interested in making useful work happen with computer vision. I believe nearly every robotics problem has perception at its core, and all of the downstream actions taken by the robot rely on a good assessment of the world around it. While at CMU I did my best to dive into imaging, machine learning for image processing, and 3D reconstruction.


Projects

Here is a collection of past projects that I had documentation for, some serious and some fun.

   
Fyto Fyto
Worked at this sustainable agriculture robotics company for two years
Skeletonization Skeletonization
Attempting to decompose stereo images of vines into skeletal models
Flash Stereo Flash Stereo
Explored using both flash and no-flash images in outdoor scenes
Florascope Florascope
Idea for in-field high quality leaf images that was given some thought but not finished
RightHand RightHand
Worked at this piece-picking startup for six years, from Applications Engineer to a Senior Software Engineer
Weather Balloon Weather Balloon
Launched weather balloons across Massachusetts for some cool GoPro footage
Air Maze Air Maze
Made a 3D maze game out of the Bernoulli effect
NASA Sample Challenge NASA Sample Challenge
Constructed a robot for a NASA rover challenge at WPI
Sailbot Sailbot
Worked on making 2m autonomous sailboats
Quadcopter Control Quadcopter Control
Capstone project to land quadcopters on a target board
Magnetic Levitation Magnetic Levitation
Made a device to electromagnetically levitate a nut
Barrett Technology Barrett Technology
Mechanical intern at Barrett, which makes tendon-driven robotic arms
Harvest Automation Harvest Automation
Quality engineering intern at Harvest, testing agricultural robots

Interests

Other random interests include running, hiking, choir (shout-out to Revels), soccer, and fire arts (shout-out to Wildfire).

One fun suggestion - if you use git and have access to any large repositories with many contributors, do yourself a favor and run gource, then sit back and enjoy. This is a wonderful tool.


© Eric Schneider 2022, inspired by 1 2