Fernando Cladera Embedded Roboticist
Welcome to my Website
I am currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Computer Science at the University of Pennsylvania under Dr. Hsieh, Dr. Taylor and Dr. Kumar. I focus in the intersection of embedded systems, autonomous robots, and event-based vision. Specifically, I am interested in accelerating computing-intensive tasks in robotics perception and navigation towards robotics autonomy. I have more than six years of experience in hardware, robotics, and embedded systems design.
Do not hesitate to contact me.
Professional Experience
Ph.D. Student
University of Pennsylvania - GRASP Lab
Read moreMy research at Penn focuses on energy-efficient hardware architectures for robotics. I am particularly interested in event-based vision and hardware accelerators applied to micro and nano aerial vehicles.
Research intern
Samsung AI Center NY
Read moreAt SAIC NY, I focus on hardware architectures for event-based sensors, such as the Dynamic Vision Sensor (DVS). Our research includes network discretization, preprocessing techniques, and efficient hardware implementations.
Engineering Intern
Nokia Bell Labs - BHAG Realization Lab
Read moreDuring my Internship at Bell Labs, I focused on developing a low-latency video streaming solution for mobile robots. I achieved a glass-to-glass latency reduction of 43% compared to previous solutions at BHAG Lab.
Besides, I collaborated in the development of embedded systems for grasping applications in drones.
I presented the results of the team to the Nokia CTO, and I won the Summer Intern Best Presentation award.
CTO - Embedded Software Engineering Solutions
TOROID
Read moreTOROID is an IT consulting company focused on the development of turn-key solutions in embedded systems.
As a CTO, I took part in the following projects:
- The firmware of IoT P2P video cameras, a SIP endpoint running on custom embedded Linux.
- A low-cost acceleration data logger with real-time capabilities used to evaluate vibrations in engineering models (link).
Also, I collaborated with the following projects:
- The development of LiPo battery chargers for educational robotics and personal transportation applications.
Graduate Teaching Assistant
Microcontrollers and Power Electronics
UNCuyo
Read moreMicrocontrollers and Power Electronics is a core course of the Mechatronics Engineer's Degree at UNCuyo.
As a Graduate Teaching Assistant, I was responsible for the lecture about programmable logic devices and VHDL. Additionally, I develop PCB prototypes with microcontrollers and CPLDs.
Engineer Internship
Automatic Control Lab
UNCuyo
Read moreThe Automatic Control Lab (School of Engineering - UNCuyo) does applied research in process control applications for oil and wine industries.
During this internship, I built three PLC trainers using Twido 20DTK modules. Students use these trainers to learn the basics of PLC and SCADA programming.
Research Internship
Cairn Team
IRISA/Inria
Read moreThe Cairn project-team researches new architectures, algorithms, and design methods for flexible and energy efficiency domain-specific system-on-chip (SoC).
During this internship, I developed a fixed-point energy-optimized OFDM receiver. We estimated the energy savings in two platforms (FPGA, ARM7). Preliminary results show that we can reduce up to 60% of the energy with this adaptive technique.
Cairn websiteEducation
MSE Candidate
Robotics (ROBO)
University of Pennsylvania
GPA: 4.0
Read moreI am a full-time student in the ROBO MSE, where I take courses in the following fields:
- Machine Learning (CIS 520)
- Computer vision (CIS 580)
- Learning and Artificial Intelligence in Robotics (CIS 521, CIS 700, ESE 650)
- UAVs (MEAM 543, MEAM 620)
- FPGA architectures (ESE 532)
- Entrepreneurship (EAS 545)
Engineer's Degree
Mechatronics
UNCuyo
Average: 9.39/10 - Class Rank: 1/101
Best Student Award 2014 of the School of Engineering
Read moreUNCuyo (Universidad Nacional de Cuyo) is a national public university located in Mendoza, Argentina.
I obtained this degree after 11 academic semesters, including a final project and an internship. This degree program focuses on robotics, automation, real-time systems, mechanical design, and manufacturing.
Due to my academic performance at UNCuyo, I won a scholarship to pursue a Double Degree Exchange Scholarship at ENIB (École Nationale d'Ingénieurs de Brest).
Master Degree
SISEA
Université de Rennes 1
Class Rank: 1/18
Read moreSISEA stands for Signal, Image, Embedded Systems, and Automatics. This Master of Science is delivered by the University of Rennes 1 and the Advanced National College of Applied Science and Technology (ENSSAT), Lannion, France.
The branch Embedded Systems centers on embedded systems applied to signal processing and telecommunication applications.
Skills
- Discrete, continuous and hybrid systems
- System modeling
- Aerial Robotics
- Distributed robotics communications
- Autonomous Navigation
- Service Robots
- Computer vision
- ROS
- Learning in Robotics (SLAM, Kalman Filters, HMMs, RL)
- PLCs
- SCADA
- Sensors and instrumentation
- C
- Java
- Python
- Matlab
- CAS (Maxima)
- Bash
- SQL (PostgreSQL, SQLite)
- GNU/Linux
- GUI (QT, Swing)
- Android
- RTOS (FreeRTOS, ChibiOS)
- Docker
- Git
- LaTeX
- 32-bit MCUs (STM32F0/4, LPC2292, AT90SAM7ARM7)
- 8-bit MCUs (Atmel megaAVR, Microchip PIC 18F)
- FPGAs and CPLDs (Xilinx Virtex 5/6, UltraScale+ MPSoC) with VHDL or HLS
- Embedded Linux
- Signal processing and DSPs (TI TMS320)
- Image processing
- Power Electronics
- PCB design (KiCad)
- Communication interfaces (CAN, I2C, SPI)
- CAD (CATIA, FreeCAD)
- Hydraulics and pneumatics actuators
- Mechanical vibrations
- Fluid mechanics
- 3D printing
- Machining
- Aerodynamics
Languages
- English
- Spanish
- French
Publications
Journals
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EV-Catcher: High Speed Object Catching Using Low-latency Event-based Neural Networks
Fernando Cladera Ojeda*, Ziyun Wang*,Anthony Bisulco, Daewon Lee, Camillo J. Taylor, Kostas Daniilidis, M. Ani Hsieh, Daniel D. Lee, and Volkan Isler
Under Review, May 2022.
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Stronger Together: Air-Ground Robotic Collaboration Using Semantics
Ian D. Miller, Fernando Cladera, Trey Smith, Camillo Jose Taylor, Vijay Kumar
Under Review, May 2022.
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Challenges and Opportunities for Autonomous Micro-UAVs in Precision Agriculture
Xu Liu, Steven W. Chen, Guilherme V. Nardari, Chao Qu, Fernando Cladera Ojeda, Camillo J. Taylor, Vijay Kumar
IEEE Micro 42, 61-68, Feb. 2022.
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Large-scale Autonomous Flight with Real-time Semantic SLAM under Dense Forest Canopy
Xu Liu, Guilherme V. Nardari, Fernando Cladera Ojeda, Yuezhan Tao, Alex Zhou, Thomas Donnelly, Chao Qu, Steven W. Chen, Roseli A. F. Romero, Camillo J. Taylor, Vijay Kumar.
IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters 7.2 and 2022 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 5512-5519, Feb. 2022
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Mine Tunnel Exploration using Multiple Quadrupedal Robots
Ian D. Miller, Fernando Cladera, Anthony Cowley, Shreyas S. Shivakumar, Elijah S. Lee, Laura Jarin-Lipschitz, Akhilesh Bhat, Neil Rodrigues, Alex Zhou, Avraham Cohen, Adarsh Kulkarni, James Laney, Camillo Jose Taylor, Vijay Kumar.
In IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters 5.2 2840-2847, Feb. 2020.
International Conferences
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Fast Motion Understanding with Spatiotemporal Neural Networks and Dynamic Vision Sensors
Anthony Bisulco, Fernando Cladera Ojeda, Volkan Isler, Daniel D. Lee.
In 2021 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), pages 14098-14104, May 2021.
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Near-chip Dynamic Vision Filtering for Low-Bandwidth Pedestrian Detection
Fernando Cladera Ojeda*, Anthony Bisulco*, Volkan Isler, Daniel D. Lee.
In 2020 IEEE Computer Society Annual Symposium on VLSI (ISVLSI), pages 234-239, July 2020.
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On-Device Event Filtering with Binary Neural Networks for Pedestrian Detection Using Neuromorphic Vision Sensors
Fernando Cladera Ojeda*, Anthony Bisulco*, Daniel Kepple, Volkan Isler, Daniel D. Lee.
In 2020 IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP), pages 3084-3088, Oct. 2020.
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Channel-Aware Energy Optimization of OFDM Receivers Using Dynamic Precision Scaling in FPGAs
Fernando Cladera, Matthieu Gautier, and Olivier Sentieys.
In 23rd European Signal Processing Conference (EUSIPCO 2015), pages 1571-1575, Aug.-Sept. 2015.
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Energy-Aware Computing via Adaptive Precision under Performance Constraints in OFDM Wireless Receivers
Fernando Cladera, Matthieu Gautier, and Olivier Sentieys,
In IEEE Computer Society Annual Symposium on VLSI (ISVLSI 2015), pages 591-596, July 2015.