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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

2020

Ph.D. Student

University of Pennsylvania - GRASP Lab

My 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.

2019

Research intern

Samsung AI Center NY

At 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.

2018

Engineering Intern

Nokia Bell Labs - BHAG Realization Lab

During 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.

2016

CTO - Embedded Software Engineering Solutions

TOROID

TOROID 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.
2016

Graduate Teaching Assistant

Microcontrollers and Power Electronics
UNCuyo

Microcontrollers 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.

2014

Engineer Internship

Automatic Control Lab
UNCuyo

The 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.

2013

Research Internship

Cairn Team
IRISA/Inria

The 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 website

Education

2019

MSE Candidate

Robotics (ROBO)

University of Pennsylvania

GPA: 4.0

I 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)

GRASP ROBO MSE website

2014

Engineer's Degree

Mechatronics

UNCuyo

Average: 9.39/10 - Class Rank: 1/101

Best Student Award 2014 of the School of Engineering

UNCuyo (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).

UNCuyo Official website (Spanish)

ENIB Official website (French)

2013

Master Degree

SISEA

Université de Rennes 1

Class Rank: 1/18

SISEA 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.

Official Master website (French)

ENSSAT website

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

  • 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.

  • Stronger Together: Air-Ground Robotic Collaboration Using Semantics

    Ian D. Miller, Fernando Cladera, Trey Smith, Camillo Jose Taylor, Vijay Kumar

    Under Review, May 2022.

  • 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.

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

Patents

  • Dynamic vision sensors for fast motion understanding

    AR Bisulco, F CLADERA OJEDA, IV Isler, DD Lee

    US Patent App. 17/328,518, 2022.

  • Dynamic vision filtering for event detection

    Anthony Robert Bisulco, Fernando CLADERA OJEDA, Ibrahim Volkan Isler, Daniel Dongyuel Lee

    US Patent App. 17/129,018, 2021.

Recent Projects

  • All
  • Embedded
  • Automation and Robotics
  • Code
  • OVC project embedded code
    OVC
  • SubT project avatar
    SubT Challenge
  • DVS project avatar
    DVS BNN Detection
  • Acceleration Data Logger project avatar
    Acceleration Logger
  • Level Control Trainer project avatar
    Level Control Trainer
  • DPS OFDM project avatar
    DPS OFDM Receivers
  • SAM7H256 project avatar
    FreeRTOS SAM7-H256
  • Qriro project avatar
    Qriro

Contact

Contact Info

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