Bence Magyar
Principal Software Engineer, Robotics at Locus Robotics
City of Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolBence Magyar is a Principal Software Engineer in robotics with 13 years of experience applying research-grade motion planning and manipulation expertise to production systems, currently leading robotics software at Locus Robotics from Edinburgh. He holds a PhD in robotic manipulation and motion planning and has driven end-to-end work across perception, planning, control and integration at companies including Five AI and PAL Robotics. An active open-source maintainer and ros-controls lead, Bence has contributed substantive fixes and feature work to flagship projects like MoveIt and ROS/ROS2 control stacks, plus OpenCV’s 3D surface-matching modules. He combines deep algorithmic understanding with pragmatic engineering—refactoring tests, managing dependencies and improving CI—to keep complex robotics stacks reliable in practice. Notably, his mentoring and academic roles show a strong commitment to community and knowledge transfer alongside shipping production systems.
13 years of coding experience
10 years of employment as a software developer
Heriot-Watt University Edinburgh CampusCoursera (online courses)Master of Science (MSc), Computer Science, Master of Science (MSc), Computer Science at Eötvös Loránd TudományegyetemUdacity (online courses)
English, Hungarian
Github Skills (24)
dependency-management10
unit-testing10
algorithms10
opencv10
robotics10
c-language10
python10
testing10
build-system10
gt10
rviz10
moveit10
urdf10
computer-vision10
cprogramming-language10
Programming languages (15)
Github contributions (5)
pal-robotics/aruco_ros
Feb 2014 - Apr 2022
Software package and ROS wrappers of the Aruco Augmented Reality marker detector library
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:49 commits, 14 PRs, 30 pushes in 8 years 3 months
Contributions summary:Bence primarily contributed to the development and organization of the `aruco_ros` package, which provides ROS wrappers for the Aruco marker detection library. Their work includes adding and reorganizing package contents, modifying include files, and updating changelogs. Further contributions involved fixing potential crashes related to camera distortion and reorganizing the package structure into three separate packages. They also added marker list publishing capabilities.
arucoaugmented-realityrosaruco-detectoraruco-library
ros-controls/ros2_controllers
Sep 2017 - Jan 2023
Generic robotic controllers to accompany ros2_control
Role in this project:Back-end Developer & Test Automation Engineer
Back-end Developer & Test Automation EngineerContributions:923 reviews, 156 commits, 712 PRs in 5 years 5 months
Contributions summary:Bence primarily contributed to the test suite, removing dependencies, refactoring code related to controller interfaces and hardware interfaces, and updating test setup for the `ros2_controllers` repository. They made significant changes to test files within the joint trajectory controller, demonstrating a strong focus on ensuring code quality and functionality. Their work involved refactoring code, which enhanced the maintainability and reliability of the existing tests.
roboticsrosros2ros2-controlros2-controllers
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