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JAY DAVEY
Mobile robotics, industrial robot arms, mechatronic design
www.jaydavey.com | linkedin.com/in/jaydavey | jay.davey87@gmail.com | Bendigo, VIC, Australia
WORK HISTORY
RAMPEY - CEO, Co-founder, Roboticist, 1yr | February 2024 - Present, Bendigo, VIC, Australia
Founded to improve the independent accessibility and safety of public transport. Rampey is a robotic ramp that automatically aligns to the doors of trains and autonomous shuttles before they open for passengers. Raised a pre-seed investment round from the Cerebral Palsy Alliance. Partnered with the Toyota Center for Excellence in Altona to manufacture the first production robot. Winner of the LaunchVic CivVic Labs Public Transport Access Challenge in June 2024.
AUTONOMOUS AG - Technology Specialist, 8mo | September 2024 - June 2025, Bendigo VIC, Australia
Safety bumper system designed to respond to low speed autonomous tractor collisions. 3D CAD, mechanism design, radar sensors, proximity sensors, low voltage control box wiring, cable and harness routing, part ordering and assembly, technical documentation writing. Participated in field installations and testing of autonomous driving retrofit kits for Fendt 700 series tractors.
ROBUST.AI - Principal Mechatronic Engineer, 2.5 years | October 2021 - March 2024, San Carlos, CA, USA
Led the development of Carter from concept to patented mobile robotic technology, now deployed at several 3rd Party Logistics companies and global logistics company DHL. Became a world expert in designing robotic holonomic mobility. Built and led the team, contributed to force-sensitive user input, mechatronic design, and development. Was a key engineer that led to RobustAI’s recognition as a 2024 World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer. Managed contractors and direct reports, overseeing mechanical, electrical, and control subsystems under tight deadlines. Won an internal hackathon for a control schema for making an omnidirectional robot move and feel like pushing a block of ice.
ZYMERGEN (now GINKGO BIOWORKS) - Staff Mechatronic Engineer, 4yrs | July 2017 – Oct 2021, Emeryville, CA, USA
Founding engineer of the Reconfigurable Automation Cart (RACs) project, leading the delivery of high-stakes demonstrations for Zymergen investors (SoftBank). Managed several 6-axis robot pathing installations with linear slide integrations, and Beckhoff PLCs while initiating RAC assembly outsourcing with modular enclosures. Led a team of three engineers and two interns. Internal expert on CAD, robotic simulation, and mechanical design. Winner of an internal hackathon for a mobile labware delivery robot.
TRANSCRIPTIC (now STRATEOS) - Member of Technical Staff (Automation Engineer), 2yrs | June 2015 – June 2017, Menlo Park, CA, USA
Increased customer throughput by 33% by redesigning an automated microwell plate transport robot. Managed large, multi-contributor CAD assemblies for motion analysis and collision detection. Handled product and project management tasks, tracking specifications and milestones. PDM administrator for CAD data, BoMs, part numbering, and revision control.
TESLA MOTORS - Chassis and Air Suspension Team, Intern, 4 months | May 2014 – Aug 2014, Fremont, CA, USA
Upgrading Model X air suspension firmware’s system behavior through changes to control state machines. C code, integration of embedded microcontroller CAN driver and DBC file changes, successful testing and troubleshooting of sensor reading issues.
McCULLOCHS HYDRAULIC ENGINEERS - Mechanical Eng. Work Experience, 6mo accumulated | 2008 - 2009, Bendigo, VIC, Australia
Design, fabrication, and implementation of a novel scrap metal and hydraulic hose waste removal system for McCullochs’ manufacturing plant. Design of an exploration drilling rig rod handling gripper. Hydraulic and pneumatic systems education.
EDUCATION
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA | Philadelphia, USA. Aug 2013 - May 2015, Master of Science and Eng. (Robotics). GPA: 3.60 / 4.00
PENN STATE UNIVERSITY | State College, USA. Aug 2009 - Dec 2009, International student exchange program. GPA: 4.00 / 4.00
UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES | Sydney, Australia. Jan 2006- Aug 2010, Bachelor of Engineering (Mechatronic), First Class Honors
SKILLS & EXPERIENCE
Mechanical / CAD - Onshape, SolidWorks + PDM vault setup and administration, Autodesk Inventor, Pro/ENGINEER, Fusion 360, SolidCAM and CAM tool pathing, CNC milling and turning, GD&T, 3D printing, Laser cutting, Manual turning/Lathe, Welding (oxy-acetylene, MIG). Seasoned at prototyping, test fixtures/jigs, Advanced mechanism design. Generation of BOMs, raw material cut lists and assembly instructions., outsourcing assemblies to vendors, extending engineering teams to leverage integrators and contractors. Basic pneumatics and hydraulics.
Electrical / Controls - Beckhoff CX series PLCs and IO slices, oscilloscopes, function generators, variable power supplies, SM soldering, simple PCB design in EAGLE/KiCAD/Fritzing, MOSFETS/H-Bridge motor drivers, solenoids, cable and harness via e-chains, creating system block diagrams and defining cable assemblies. Signal processing and filtering, PID with Feedforward tuning experience.
Robotics / Sensors - RoboDK simulation software, MECA500 industrial robots, integration of 6-axis robots with linear slides, gravity compensation of linkages, inverse kinematics, translations and rotations of tool centerpoints and reference frames, joint space and pose space conversion. Occupancy grid mapping, mobile robotic drive systems, gripper design, holonomic motion design. Lidar, radar, IR/US/inductive proximity sensors, GPS modules, IMUs, optical and magnetic absolute or incremental encoders.
Software - MATLAB with some Computer Vision, beginner Python / Linux, basic C/C++, RobotC, version control via Git / Subversion. Reading PWM signals, analog ADC conversion, I2C and SPI, CAN bus, wireless serial comms experience over XBee radios, data acquisition, debugging via terminal programs such as RealTerm, Hercules. JTAG and CodeWarrior debugger tools. Arduino and mBed microcontroller families. Always looking for opportunities to strengthen software experience
PATENTS
“Collaborative Autonomous Mobile Robotic Ramps For Improving The Speed And Safety Of Boarding Mass Transit” Inventors Jay S Davey, IP Australia Standard Patent Application 2025202924
“Autonomous Robot Double Drive Assembly” Inventors Jay S Davey, et al. US Patent No: 12,204,350 B1, issued 2025-01-21
“Scalable, mobile, and reconfigurable modules for processing biological and chemical materials” Inventors Jay S Davey, et al. US Provisional Patent Application US20200393477A1, 2020-12-17
PUBLICATIONS
“Design and characterization of the EP-Face connector” T Tosun, J Davey, C Liu, M Yim. International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2016 IEEE/RSJ.
“Automated self-assembly of large maritime structures by a team of robotic boats” J. Paulos, N. Eckenstein, T Tosun, J. Davey et al. IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering 2015, p958-968.
“Self-assembly of a swarm of autonomous boats into floating structures” I. O’Hara, J. Paulos, J. Davey, et al. in Robotics and automation ICRA, 2014 IEEE international conference on, 2014. Winner of Best Automation Paper Award.
“ModLock: A Manual Connector for Reconfigurable Modular Robots” J. Davey, J. Sastra, M. Piccoli, and M. Yim, in Proc. of the IEEE/RSJ Intl. Conf. on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2012, Vilamoura, Portugal.
“Emulating Self-reconfigurable Robots – Design of the SMORES System” J. Davey, N. Kwok, and M. Yim, in Proc. of the IEEE/RSJ Intl. Conf. on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2012, Vilamoura, Portugal.
AWARDS
International Design Award (IDA) 2024: https://www.idesignawards.com/winners/zoom.php?eid=9-54506-24
Good Design (Medical category, 2024): https://gooddesignawards.org/project/ginkgo-bioworks-racs-system-2022/
ACADEMIC PROJECTS & PORTFOLIO www.jaydavey.com (portfolio)
University of Pennsylvania, PA. 2011 – 2015
TACTICALLY EXPANDABLE MARITIME PLATFORM (DARPA-BAA-10-57) Lead mechanical engineer for the design, development and implementation of scale model modular self-reconfigurable boats. Testing and QA before batch manufacturing 100 system modules.
SMORES Lead mechanical design engineer. Built a novel self-reconfigurable, self-assembling modular robot system. Design used less actuators than previous designs without sacrificing module versatility or function.
CK-BOT PLANETARY CONTINGENCY CHALLENGE 1st Place, ICRA 2011, Shanghai. Built robotic modules for a simulated resource critical space mission.
MODLOCK Co-inventor of a connector for self-reconfigurable robots. Enabled rapid assembly of robots in seconds. Stress analysis.
PERSONA Lead engineer for a prototype holonomic telepresence robot with a manipulator. In charge of a team of 11 undergraduate students.
HEXAPOD ROBOT Designed, programmed and built from scratch an animatronic 6 legged 18 DoF hexapod robot “Jitter the Jitterbug”. MATLAB, laser cutters, XBee and Maestro servo controllers.
ROBOCKEY Lead mechanical design of robots to play ‘ice-hockey’. Came up with a uniquely superior design that exploited self-assembling midfielders that could trap the puck between themselves to exclude other robots from getting to the puck.
ROBOTICS, MEAM520 Light painting with PUMA260. Programming, solved Inverse Kinematics, simulation.
University of New South Wales, NSW. 2006 – 2010
BEST OVERALL DESIGN, INDUSTRIAL ROBOTICS Programmed a 6 DoF industrial robot for palletizing.
HIGH DISTINCTION, ROBOT DESIGN Built and programmed robot capable of mapping an unknown environment. Responsible for path planning in MATLAB, electronics and mechanical design.
AUSTRALIAN 20TH WARMAN STUDENT DESIGN-AND-BUILD COMPETITION 1st Place National Final: Responsible for the mechanical design and construction of an autonomous device to complete a space themed obstacle course.
IMPROMPTU DESIGN COMPETITION Best Overall Design, Demonstrated a winning solution to an impromptu engineering design problem. Awarded out of ~100 teams of freshmen engineers at UNSW.
AIR-POWERED VEHICLE PROJECT, ENGINEERING DESIGN 2nd Place, Responsible for the mechanical design of a racer that used only the airflow of a Dustbuster portable vacuum for propulsion. Team of 7 members.
Bendigo Senior Secondary College 2005
STUDENT OF THE YEAR Most outstanding contribution to student life, high academic achievement, excellent extracurricular contribution, exceptional leadership. Awarded out of ~800 graduating high school students.
VOLUNTEERING
2025 Maryborough Theatre Company, Set design and construction - “Into The Woods”
2024 Maryborough Energy Breakthrough - Design and Construction judging panel
2024 Sphero Global Challenge (Robotics) - On field judge
INTERESTS and HOBBIES
Sustainable energy / storage / transport, home improvement, 3D printing, cricket, chess, dad jokes, Lego, golf
REFERENCES
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