Controls Engineer, Robotics

Job description

### About Tutor We believe robots are the biggest lever we have to making the physical world a better, more affordable place. But robots are a rounding error in our society: nearly nine out of ten American factories and warehouses don’t even have a single robot, and robots have yet to make their way into our homes or places of business. Tutor Intelligence is changing that. Tutor is a robotics research and deployment company, building generally capable robot hardware and artificial intelligence to enable robots to go where no robots have gone before. [Sonny](https://tutorintelligence.com/sonny) is a semi-humanoid robot with frontier dexterity approaching the human form. [Cassie](https://tutorintelligence.com/cassie) does back-breaking work, moving boxes, pallets, and bulk goods for businesses from family-owned manufacturers to some of the largest brands in the world. Tutor robots are manufactured at scale and operate as a network, combining the whole fleet’s learned experience to train ever more capable robot artificial intelligence. Founded at MIT and headquartered in Watertown, MA, our team is full stack: we design and manufacture robot hardware, train our own models, work directly with the smallest and largest end-customers, and maintain our fleet across the United States. We’re a team of researchers, engineers, technicians, operators, and sellers who love building things and solving hard problems. Our mission is grand: robots everywhere, for the common good, raising the standard of living across North America, and then the world. ### The Role Our robots work in customer facilities with people nearby. The code that decides how an arm moves, how fast, and how it stops is what keeps those people safe. We're looking for a controls engineer to own it. The work is controls: joint limits, speed limits, stopping distances and stopping times, contact and collision behavior, the loop that turns a motion command into torque, and the monitoring that detects when that loop misbehaves. It is also software work. The code lives in a large codebase that changes every week, and the safety-critical parts of it have to be written, organized, tested, and reviewed so they stay correct through those changes. The person we want has worked in a codebase where a mistake had physical consequences, has written and organized a lot of code there, and is comfortable with the physics underneath it. You will build the hardware-in-the-loop test bench that runs the control code against real arms and real stop circuits, in continuous integration. You will also keep the evidence current: the measurements and tests that show the arm stops when it should, updated as the code, the arms, and the applications change. The formal side of safety, risk assessments and the standards customers ask about, is part of the role. We will teach it. ### What You'll Do - **Own the safety-critical control code for our arms:** Limits, stop behavior, collision response, and the monitoring around the control loop - **Work on the control loop itself:** Timing, stability, and failure modes, from the motion command down to the drives - **Organize the code so it can be trusted:** Keep the safety-critical parts small, separated, tested, and reviewable, and set the rules for how other code touches them - **Build hardware-in-the-loop testing:** A bench and a continuous-integration path that run the control code against real arms and real safety hardware - **Keep the evidence current:** Stopping-time measurements and the tests behind the safety argument, updated whenever the code or the hardware changes - **Document the design:** Decisions, limits, and the reasons for them, in a form other engineers follow ### What We're Looking For - **Real-time control experience on physical systems:** Robot arms, vehicles, aircraft, or similar. You have written control code that moved hardware and handled its failures - **Experience in a mission-critical codebase:** You have written and organized a large amount of code where mistakes had physical consequences, and you know what that requires of structure, testing, and review - **Comfortable with the physics:** Dynamics, torque, inertia, stopping distances, contact. You can reason about what the arm will do - **Strong systems software:** C++ and Python or similar, real-time behavior on Linux, and safety-critical code kept separate from the rest - **Experience with hardware-in-the-loop testing:** You have built or used a rig that put real hardware in the loop with software under test ### Nice to Have - Exposure to safety standards for robots or machinery, such as ISO 10218, ISO 13849, or ANSI/RIA R15.06 - EtherCAT or other fieldbus experience with servo drives - Experience with safety-rated controllers or certified functional safety components - Experience in warehouses, manufacturing, or other environments where robots and people share space