Randy Mackay
Lead Software Engineer at Japan Drones
Nagano, Japan
Summary
🤩
Rockstar
Top expert inAutonomous Robotics and Computer Vision Development
Randy Mackay is a Lead Software Engineer based in Nagano, Japan, with 14 years of experience building embedded and back-end systems for autonomous vehicles. He is a lead developer on ArduPilot’s multicopter software and a prolific open-source contributor across the MAVLink ecosystem, improving ground station tooling (MAVProxy, MAVROS), companion computer integrations, and core autopilot drivers. His work spans low-level sensor integration, real-time hardware interfaces, and companion computer DevOps—adding new sensor protocols, proximity/obstacle logic, and failsafe navigation features. Notably, he pairs technical writing for the ArduPilot wiki with hands-on engineering, ensuring complex avionics changes are both implemented and well documented. Practical, detail-oriented, and fluent across embedded firmware to higher-level telemetry services, he excels at turning sensor quirks into reliable flight behaviors.
15 years of coding experience
Github Skills (40)
administrator10
c-language10
px410
restructuredtext10
autopilot10
admin10
python10
mavlink10
hardware-interface10
technical-writing10
bash10
proxy10
rs10
integrations10
system10
Programming languages (18)
Github contributions (5)
ArduPilot/ardupilot_wiki
Apr 2016 - Jan 2023
Repository for ArduPilot wiki issues and wiki-specific website infrastructure.
Role in this project:
Technical Writer
Technical WriterContributions:490 reviews, 1609 commits, 838 PRs in 6 years 10 months
Contributions summary:Randy's commits are focused on documenting the ArduPilot wiki pages, and appear in the "ardupilot_wiki" repository. Their work involves adding and editing documentation, including new pages and corrections. The documentation includes a wide variety of topics related to autopilot hardware, and its control of vehicles and components.
ardupilotinfrastructuretiddlywiki5autopilotwiki
ArduPilot/companion
Nov 2015 - Sep 2020
Companion computer startup scripts and examples
Role in this project:Embedded Systems Engineer / DevOps Engineer
Embedded Systems Engineer / DevOps EngineerContributions:7 reviews, 84 commits, 26 PRs in 4 years 10 months
Contributions summary:Randy primarily focused on configuring and deploying companion computer systems for the ArduPilot project, particularly on Raspberry Pi 2 and NVIDIA TX1 platforms. Their contributions included writing setup scripts, integrating software packages like dronekit and mavproxy, and configuring video streaming via gstreamer and http-launch. The user also added scripts for setting up a WiFi access point and integrating the ZED camera and other peripheral components.
startup-script
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