Tom Pittenger
Senior Robotics Engineer at Crash and Burn Solutions
Clovis, California, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolTom Pittenger is a Senior Robotics Engineer with 13 years of embedded systems and autonomous flight experience, currently leading robotics work at Kraus Hamdani Aerospace and maintaining a freelance practice focused on ArduPilot-based ground and fixed-wing vehicles. He has deep firmware and sensor-integration expertise from roles at Intel, Trimble, and other startups, and contributes as an ArduPilot core developer—improving pymavlink, Mission Planner, and ArduPilot flight stack code and documentation. Tom blends low-level C/C++ embedded development with full-stack fixes and technical writing, regularly enhancing usability (e.g., abort-landing features, MAVLink 2 parsing) and maintaining clear user documentation. Based in Clovis, CA, he holds advanced training in electrical and computer engineering and brings a rare combination of avionics-grade debugging, DSP/firmware background, and open-source stewardship to commercial aerospace projects.
13 years of coding experience
14 years of employment as a software developer
Computer Engineering, Embedded Systems & Robotics, Computer Engineering, Embedded Systems & Robotics at California State University, Fresno
Stackoverflow
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Github Skills (32)
c-language10
restructuredtext10
mavlink10
firmware10
rs10
java10
javas10
code-generation10
sys10
system-integration10
dotnet-core10
sensor-fusion10
embedded10
cprogramming-language10
csharp10
Programming languages (14)
Github contributions (5)
ArduPilot/ardupilot
May 2015 - Jan 2023
ArduPlane, ArduCopter, ArduRover, ArduSub source
Role in this project:
Embedded Systems Engineer
Embedded Systems EngineerContributions:1032 reviews, 1068 commits, 1284 PRs in 7 years 9 months
Contributions summary:Tom primarily contributed to the ArduPilot project, a widely-used open-source autopilot system. The user's commits focused on the modification and optimization of low-level systems in ArduSub and ArduPlane as well as adding support for new sensor backends. The user demonstrates expertise in modifying code for a diverse array of sensors, including handling data and logic as well as debugging and tuning. The user's contributions indicate a deep understanding of embedded systems development and sensor integration within the broader domain of drone/robotic technology.
arducopterauvdronerovuas
ArduPilot/pymavlink
May 2019 - Oct 2020
python MAVLink interface and utilities
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:5 reviews, 10 commits, 9 PRs in 1 year 5 months
Contributions summary:Tom contributed to the `pymavlink` repository by implementing and refining the Java code generator. Their work involved enhancing the handling of uint64 and int64 values, cleaning up code, and adding a static name() accessor to messages. Further modifications included trimming output and unifying input parsing for MAVLink 2, alongside sanitizing array inputs. These changes indicate a focus on improving the library's usability, efficiency, and compatibility.
mavlinkpython
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