John Wiseman is a Senior R&D Imagineer with 20 years of experience building conversational characters, robotics, and interactive systems for products ranging from research labs to Walt Disney Imagineering. He blends deep technical chops in C/Python and systems-level engineering with applied AI and NLP, having shipped voice activity tooling (py-webrtcvad) and telemetry-enabled mapping for MAVProxy. At Disney he turns research prototypes into immersive experiences, drawing on a background that includes Google, robotics startups, and a PhD stint in AI at the University of Chicago. His work sits at the intersection of real-time systems, speech/voice processing, and human-facing interaction design. Based in Los Angeles, he is equally comfortable writing low-level glue code as leading R&D to production-grade creative technology. An avid open-source contributor, he favors pragmatic engineering that bridges laboratory prototypes and live, story-driven installations.
20 years of coding experience
17 years of employment as a software developer
B.S., Math and Computer Science, B.S., Math and Computer Science at Northern Illinois University
Ph.D. dropout, Artificial Intelligence, Ph.D. dropout, Artificial Intelligence at University of Chicago
Python interface to the WebRTC Voice Activity Detector
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Contributions:69 commits, 7 PRs, 58 pushes in 4 years 10 months
Contributions summary:John primarily contributed to building a Python interface for the WebRTC Voice Activity Detector (VAD). Their work includes creating the core C-based glue code for the Python wrapper, implementing essential functionalities like creating, initializing, setting the mode, and processing audio frames. Furthermore, the user developed methods for rate and frame length validation, along with implementing a series of unit tests to verify the correct functioning of the library.
Contributions summary:John contributed to the development of a modest map display within the MAVProxy ground station project. They implemented a map module using `mmap` and `modestmaps.js`, enabling the display of GPS data and telemetry information. Furthermore, the user worked on improving the user interface by integrating different map layer options (Bing, Blue Marble) and adding a link status display.
ground-stationpythonproxymavlink-proxystation
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John Wiseman - Senior R&D Imagineer at Walt Disney Imagineering