About Me
Let's Get Acquainted
Hello and thank you for stopping by my website, let me tell you a little bit about myself and my goals.
My name Dan Cohen, I was born and raised in Phoenix, AZ and attended Embry-Riddle for my BS in Mechanical Engineering with a focus in Robotics. I have been building and programming robots since high school with FIRST Robotics. In 2016 I led my Robotics Capstone project in developing and testing a Pendulum Driven Spherical Robot. After developing the dynamics for the robot, we could not find a controller that would allow for the omnidirectional movement with the task space set points that we desired, so we created our own novel controller. We published our development with IEEE.
After graduation, I joined Setton Farms in California where I co-founded the robotics lab for the pistachio farm. Our lab focused on production quality robotics and autonomous systems to enable packaging and sorting of pistachios. This was a rare opportunity to tackle both low- and high-level problems that would alter the business model of the company. We engineered autonomous systems to change the workflow for every pistachio from start to finish. I also continued to work on research, specifically integrating neural networks, hyperspectral vision and simulation in the development of industrial robotics. After Setton, I returned to Arizona to engineer custom robotics business solutions in Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico, and Texas for a national automation distributor, Neff Power. I have engineered solutions for Amazon, Tesla, Cognex, WL Gore, Axon and NIAR (National Institute for Aviation Research). In Arizona, I connected with other engineers working on the various application of neural networks, hyperspectral vision and lastly the dynamics and controls of autonomous systems. We recently summarized our efforts in a chapter of the new edited volume, Imaging and Sensing for Unmanned Aircraft System Volume 1: Control and Performance published by IET(The Institution of Engineering and Technology), May 2020.
In 2022 I received my Masters in Robotics and Autonomous Systems and published my thesis on
Sagittal Plane Dynamic Modeling and Control of Aerial Manipulator for Phytobiopsy, Committee: Ph.D. Jnaneshwar Das, Ph.D. Hamidreza Marvi, Ph.D. David Saldaña. During this time, I consulted with MKS/Spectra Physics on developing the strategic roadmap for the Automation Engineering Team focused on the assemble and alignment of laser and optical systems. Becoming employee #1 of my second robotics manufacturing division. After 2 years the team and lab space have grown and I have enjoyed truing problems into solutions to then create industry leading robotics software and workcells that impact laser manufacturing for the good.
Goals
Robotics for me is synonymous with collaboration. Although my research interests have evolved from dynamics to controls and now path planning, I’m still a roboticist at heart who enjoys working on every part of an autonomous system to achieve the project goal.