Robert Ellenberg
Senior Software Engineer Team Lead at Tormach
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolRobert Ellenberg is a Senior Software Engineer and Team Lead with 15 years of experience building robotics and motion-control software, currently leading product development at Tormach in Philadelphia. He combines a PhD-trained interdisciplinary background in mechanical and electrical engineering with hands-on work across more than ten industrial, mobile, flying, and humanoid robots to deliver semi-autonomous systems that extend human capability. His career spans startups and industry—co-founding Carbide Labs and contributing to lab and manufacturing environments at Drexel, Kulicke & Soffa, and Tormach—where he ships pragmatic, real-time control and trajectory-planning solutions. An active open-source contributor, he made notable backend improvements to the well-known OpenRAVE robotics environment and enhanced trajectory planning in Machinekit, surfacing joint force/torque diagnostics and refining motion blending for better real-time performance. He is skilled at quickly leading small, focused teams to identify market needs and translate complex robotics research into reliable production software.
16 years of coding experience
17 years of employment as a software developer
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) Mechanical Engineering, Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) Mechanical Engineering at Drexel University
English
Stackoverflow
125reputation
7kreached
1answer
2questions
Github Skills (16)
simulations10
c1710
physics-engine10
simulation10
c-language10
robotics10
c1110
cprogramming-language10
motion-planning10
openra10
kinematics9
algorithms8
xml8
mathematics8
math8
Programming languages (6)
Github contributions (5)
machinekit/machinekit
Apr 2014 - Aug 2015
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:142 commits, 9 PRs, 18 comments in 1 year 4 months
Contributions summary:Robert primarily focused on improving the trajectory planning aspects within the machinekit/machinekit repository. Their contributions involved implementing checks for current velocity to optimize pausing, addressing velocity overruns, and distinguishing between G61 and G61.1 motion control modes. Furthermore, they refined the target velocity calculation and made improvements to the spiral arc length approximation, particularly in the blendmath module, and enhanced the behavior of the software related to these motion commands.
rdiankov/openrave
Oct 2012 - Mar 2013
Open Robotics Automation Virtual Environment: An environment for testing, developing, and deploying robotics motion planning algorithms.
Role in this project:Back-end Developer & Robotics Engineer
Back-end Developer & Robotics EngineerContributions:21 commits in 4 months
Contributions summary:Robert made significant contributions to the OpenRAVE robotics environment by addressing issues in the Kinbody XML reader related to mass calculations and mimic geometry. They implemented fixes to handle total mass specifications and ensure accurate mass assignment to individual geometries. Furthermore, the user refined simulation parameters, particularly for real-time performance, adjusting sleep times and tolerances. Additionally, they added functionality to retrieve and display joint force and torque data for analysis and debugging, improving the simulation's capabilities.
automationmotion-planningroboticstesting
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