Shawn Yao

Tenacious, result-oriented, and strong in leadership and communication, I value team cultures of open communication, and if necessary, build one.

[email protected] +852 9814 9821 @shwnyao

Research

The University of Hong Kong • June 2021 - July 2022

Submitted to IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L) 2022, available at https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9833281.

Developed the gradient propagation pipeline between PyTorch and DiffTaichi, which drastically reduced the training time.

Assisted in the development of the differentiable simulator, and performance benchmarks of other learning methods.

June 2021 - August 2021
Taipei, Taiwan

Migrated the AGV software stack from ROS1 to ROS2, e.g. reconstructing the TF tree for multi-robot communication.
Shipped an end-to-end testing solution for time-synchronized cameras, which consists of LED panels with adaptive LED flashing frequency and real-time pattern recognition using OpenCV, which accepts frames from each camera and outputs the time differences of the frames.

July 2020 - December 2020
Taipei, Taiwan

Improved the “Smart Connect” feature, a scalable Wi-Fi setup automation process for IoT devices based on SSDP protocol, in which I restructured the code, added unit tests, reduced the memory footprint, and accelerated connection speed.
Collaborated with fall detection radar imaging & home appliance companies, and integrated their products with our Wi-Fi and IoT technologies.
Migrated the project build system from Make to CMake + Ninja, resulting in a 30%-70% build time reduction.
Wrote Dockerfile to set up the build environment.
Improved & pushed for the actual changes to Git & code review workflows, documentation rules, and the onboarding wiki for the new members.

January 2019 - August 2019
Taipei, Taiwan

Achieved Guinness World Records for The Fastest 50m Swim by a Robotic Fish, with a record of 26.79 seconds.
Assisted in testing and provided consultation for firmware and hardware design issues.

September 2017 - August 2019
Taipei, Taiwan

Lead a team of 20+ members, trained 6 juniors, and managed over HK$300,000 annual budget.
Built pattern recognition for vehicle LED light source to automate and accelerate enemy targeting, with OpenCV and hue-based filtering techniques.
Worked with open-source robotics projects based on FreeRTOS released by DJI Technology Co., Ltd.
Implemented and tuned speed & position cascading PID control algorithm for gimbal and chassis BLDC motors, which were controlled over CAN protocol.

June 2020 - November 2020
Kaohsiung, Taiwan

Designed the sponsorship packages and pricing tailored to the post-pandemic trend.
Negotiated sponsorship from and maintained relationships with Microsoft and Oracle.

September 2018 - August 2019
Hong Kong

Delivered a robotics training of 8 courses, ranging from electronics, embedded systems on STM32, and control theory to 30 trainees.
Advised 3 projects on achieving successful product realization regarding design requirements, software, and electronics.

June 2018 - August 2018
Dagon, Myanmar

Delivered 2 IoT workshops on electronics and Arduino coding to 40 Myanmar students in Dagon University.
Delivered a self-powered soil-sensing product, real-time updating data via MQTT to cloud.
Built the power circuit with solar panels and power bank for simultaneous charging and discharging.

2016 - 2022, Hong Kong

Took a 2-year leave (2019.1 – 2020.12) for conscription and work.