Robots & Cars

For the 6+ years after my bachelor's, I worked at the Google Self Driving Car Project (now called Waymo) as a Software Engineer. I built the system that controls the vehicles’ positions at a fleet-wide level, and the algorithms to optimize their autonomous mileage collection and collective behaviour.

Earlier in my time at Waymo I worked on the Systems Engineering team, specifically on platform validation: brakes and steering. That, along with keeping my 50+ year old cars running – first a 1969 VW bus, and then a 1970 Mustang Grande — , gave me an ad-hoc foundation in the hardware side of robotics, which I went back to school to expand on via a Masters in Robotics at ETH Zurich.

At ETH and NASA JPL I gained the skills work on robots that interact with the natural environment in its extremes - in Space and in hard-to-reach places on Earth.

Now I’m back in my homeland of Southern Africa, excited to apply what I’ve learned in an African context.