Independent projects
Domino Hands
A robotics project using computer vision and ROS2 to autonomously stack and lay dominos using a robot arm.
Tennis Ball Retrieval Robot
An autonomous mecanum-wheel robot that detects, chases, and retrieves tennis balls on a court using dual cameras, a custom YOLO model, and a servo-controlled claw.
EKF SLAM for TurtleBot3
A ROS2 navigation stack for TurtleBot3 that detects cylindrical landmarks from lidar, performs EKF SLAM with unknown data association, and corrects odometry drift in simulation and on a real robot.
Artificial Life Simulator
An interactive evolutionary robotics sandbox that breeds 8×8 voxel creatures using Age-Fitness Pareto Optimization, with live web visualizers for lineage trees, forced mutation, crossover splicing, and custom robot design.
Jack-in-the-Box Simulation
A planar rigid-body physics simulation of a cross-shaped jack bouncing inside a shaking box, built from scratch using Euler-Lagrange dynamics, RK4 integration, and impulse-momentum impact laws.
RRT Path Planning
A real-time visualization of the Rapidly-Exploring Random Tree (RRT) algorithm navigating a 2D workspace with randomly generated circular obstacles. Built in Python.
Education
Master of Science in Robotics
Focused on robotics systems, control theory, and intelligent autonomous agents. Building on a strong foundation in mechanical engineering and computer science to push the boundaries of modern robotics.
B.S. Triple Degree: Computer Science, Mechanical Engineering & Applied Mathematics
Minor in Business. Coursework included Algorithm Design & Analysis, Natural Language Processing, AI & Machine Learning, DBMS Querying, Robotics, Information Retrieval, and Algorithms in Data Science.
Work
Software Development Engineer — AWS Redshift
Worked with Databases, EC2s, Clusters, and DevOps pipelines to add new functionalities to AWS Redshift. Created and integrated APIs with Step Functions to process customer requests. Used CloudWatch to monitor EC2, CPU memory, RDS, and EBS volumes. Operated in a large-scale Agile environment delivering impactful features for AWS customers.
SDE Intern — AWS
Worked with a multitude of AWS tools including EMR/EC2, S3, Lambda, CloudFormation, EventBridge, CloudWatch, and DevTools. Developed new data partitioning strategies for customer databases to improve query performance, and provided technical insights through developer tooling.
Zero Robotics Coach
Organized and mentored a student robotics team competing in MIT's Zero Robotics competition. Served as technical lead and support for the full competition season, guiding programming strategy to help the team succeed.
Skills
skills snapshots
- Python
- Java
- C++
- C
- JavaScript / TypeScript
- MATLAB
- R
- AWS (EC2, S3, Lambda, EMR)
- CloudWatch / CloudFormation
- Databases & SQL
- Agile / DevOps
- ROS2
- SOLIDWORKS
- ANSYS
- RVIZ
- Gazebo
- YOLO
- OpenCV
- English
- Spanish
- French
- Creole
By the Numbers
Get in touch.
Feel free to reach out whether you have a project in mind, a question, or just want to connect!
- Location
- Boston, MA / Evanston, IL
- Github
- AfricanDaniel