Hi! Nice to meet you, my name is Daniel Sun. I’m a robotic software engineer with a specialty in control systems engineering. I have a PhD. in Mechanical Engineering from UCLA where I was doing research on locomotion for legged robots. Since then, I’ve been working with an autonomous mining robot company named Offworld in Pasadena.
My interest in robotics stems from an interest in using technology to extend our physical capabilities. My current research is centered around enabling legged robots to walk, run and climb in unstructured environments. My technical expertise includes control system design, motion planning, numerical optimization, software engineering and system integration.
In my current role at Offworld, I designed the current iteration of the autonomous navigation system for their mobile robots developing and fine-tuning the control, planning, state estimation, perception, and mapping systems. What that means in my day-to-day responsibilities is that I am designing systems, writing algorithms and integrating software to allow mobile robots to sense their location, create a map of their environment and autonomously navigate within harsh environments where things like GPS and paved roads may not exist.
I received my PhD in Mechanical Engineering from UCLA in June 2023. I was with the Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory, (also known as RoMeLa) under Dennis Hong. My thesis was on computationally efficient methods for dynamic locomotion in large bipedal robots. While I was there, I worked on a bunch of different robotics projects including an adult-sized biped, a series elastic actuator, a hexapod and a two-armed robot that does magic (all of which you can see on this website). This gave me a lot of hands-on exposure to hardware and electronics, which has served me well in my current role as both a tech lead and system integrator.
Besides research, I have a passion for teaching and education. I have been a TA in the Life Sciences Core department at UCLA for many years as part of the LS30A/B and LS40 classes. I also contributed to the course curriculum through writing instructional modules, creating materials and making instructional videos for the lab sections. In 2020 I was nominated for the Distinguished Teaching award.
In my spare time, you can probably find me biking, drinking coffee at a local coffee shop or in the kitchen trying new recipes. I also produce music and design electronic musical instruments.
