Scott Kuindersma
VP Of Robotics Research at Boston Dynamics
Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolScott Kuindersma is a robotics research leader with 13 years of experience advancing legged robot control and dynamics, currently serving as VP of Robotics Research at Boston Dynamics in Cambridge, MA. He progressed through technical and leadership roles on Atlas — from controls lead to project lead and senior director — combining hands-on algorithm development with program-level strategy. A former assistant professor at Harvard and postdoc at MIT, he brings deep academic rigor (Ph.D. in Computer Science, UMass Amherst) to industrial-scale robot development. Scott is also an active contributor to the widely used RobotLocomotion/drake library, where he optimized core kinematics and contact algorithms, reflecting his knack for improving both performance-critical code and control theory. He blends research, software engineering, and systems thinking to turn complex dynamics and control problems into reliable, deployable robot behaviors.
13 years of coding experience
7 years of employment as a software developer
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) Computer Science, Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) Computer Science at University of Massachusetts Amherst
Github Skills (9)
robotics10
kinematics10
performance-optimization10
dynamics10
optimization9
cprogramming-language9
c-language9
control-systems9
algorithms9
Programming languages (4)
Github contributions (5)
RobotLocomotion/drake
May 2013 - Aug 2018
Model-based design and verification for robotics.
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer & Robotics Engineer
Back-end Developer & Robotics EngineerContributions:353 commits, 13 PRs, 62 comments in 5 years 4 months
Contributions summary:Scott made several significant optimizations to the `drake` robotics library, focusing on improving the performance of core methods and algorithms. The contributions included optimizing the `surfaceTangents` method, removing redundant operations from contact constraints, and fixing a bug in a ZMP tracker. The user also implemented features in the `RigidBodyManipulator` class. These code changes suggest involvement in both backend development and robotics engineering, particularly in the areas of kinematics, dynamics, and control.
model-basedmodel-based-designroboticsdrakeverification
kuindersma/drake
Sep 2014 - Sep 2018
A planning, control, and analysis toolbox for nonlinear dynamical systems. Please see the WIKI for documentation.
Contributions:176 commits, 3 PRs, 164 pushes in 4 years
entropypythonfinite-element-analysisnonlinearstructural-engineering
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