Michael Carroll
Staff Software Engineer at KUKA
Huntsville, Alabama, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolMichael Carroll is a Staff Software Engineer with 16 years of experience specializing in robotics middleware, simulation, and ROS/ROS2 ecosystems, currently based in Huntsville, Alabama. He has led technical efforts at Intrinsic and contributed deeply to Open Robotics, driving core changes across rcl, rclcpp, rclpy, and Gazebo/gz-sim to improve stability, argument parsing, and cross-platform compatibility. Known for pragmatic backend engineering, test automation, and release management, he frequently refactors APIs, ports libraries to ROS2, and tightens test suites to reduce runtime and compiler issues. As an interim ROS project lead and tech lead, he blends hands-on C++ and Python development with documentation and release stewardship, ensuring maintainable bridges between ROS and simulation. An unexpected strength is his track record of improving developer tooling and examples (ros2/examples, ros2/ros2cli) so newcomers can adopt complex robotics patterns more easily.
16 years of coding experience
16 years of employment as a software developer
MS Electrical Engineering, MS Electrical Engineering at Auburn University
English
Stackoverflow
186reputation
25kreached
4answers
0questions
Github Skills (64)
cli10
operating-system10
documentation10
simulation10
robotics10
c-language10
gazebosim10
python10
rc10
component-design10
testing10
simulations10
command-line-interface10
qos10
cmake10
Programming languages (23)
Github contributions (5)
ros/actionlib
Jan 2019 - Dec 2022
Provides a standardized interface for interfacing with preemptable tasks. Examples of this include moving the base to a target location, performing a laser scan and returning the resulting point cloud, detecting the handle of a door, etc.
Role in this project:
Backend & DevOps Engineer
Backend & DevOps EngineerContributions:5 reviews, 16 commits, 20 PRs in 3 years 11 months
Contributions summary:Michael primarily focused on maintaining and updating the changelogs and related package information within the actionlib and actionlib_tools repositories. They also made changes to the build system and project structure, including splitting actionlib and its tools into separate packages and updating CMake configurations. Their work included tagging releases and ensuring the project's documentation and build processes were up-to-date.
point-cloud
gazebosim/ros_gz
Nov 2019 - Jan 2023
Integration between ROS (1 and 2) and Gazebo simulation
Role in this project:Back-end Developer & Integration Engineer
Back-end Developer & Integration EngineerContributions:89 reviews, 63 commits, 112 PRs in 3 years 2 months
Contributions summary:Michael's primary contribution involved expanding the bridge functionality between ROS and Gazebo simulation environments. They implemented support for bridging messages, specifically `std_msgs/Bool`, adding conversion functions in C++ code for seamless data transfer between ROS and Gazebo. Furthermore, they refactored and modularized the code by separating conversion and factory functionalities, enhancing the project's overall structure and maintainability. Their work indicates a strong focus on integrating ROS and Gazebo, leveraging C++ to handle message conversions and expand the supported data types.
rossimulationignitionignition-transportignition-gazebo
Find and Hire Top DevelopersWe’ve analyzed the programming source code of over 60 million software developers on GitHub and scored them by 50,000 skills. Sign-up on Prog,AI to search for software developers.