Miles Pekala

Staff-level robotics controls engineer with 19 years taking systems from research concept through custom electronics, firmware, kinematics, and motion control to deployed hardware. Has independently owned full-stack controls architecture — perception, kinematics, trajectory planning, hardware interfaces, and PCB-level electronics — across robotic arms, gantries, quadrupeds, unmanned vehicles, and full-scale vehicles.

Background spans applied research (peer-reviewed publications, patented mechanisms, nationally recognized robotics work) and production engineering at startups and established companies, consistently as the engineer owning the complete control-system stack rather than a single layer of it.

Engineer at Pitpro Automation Inc. (2023-11 – 2026-07)

• Conceived, designed, and built the general-purpose control system for an automatic tire-changing robot from the ground up, serving as the sole engineer responsible for the full controls stack.
• Developed kinematics planning, hardware interfacing, and trajectory control software for a large robot arm and gantry, and designed RGBD-based perception algorithms for visual tire/vehicle identification that became the reference implementation across the robot cell.
• Designed and built wiring harnesses, power systems, and onboard compute for the tire-changing robot, and wrote C++/Python ROS2 nodes for perception, planning, and control — taking the platform from concept to deployed hardware.

Electrical Engineer at DoorDash Inc. (2021-11 – 2023-11)

• Designed and built PCBAs for battery management systems (BMS) and BLDC motor control used in production hardware.
• Wrote firmware, control software, and test tooling for BMS and motor-control systems, covering the stack from board bring-up through validation.

Automation Team Lead at unspun Inc. (2019-04 – 2020-11)

• Developed, integrated, and built a highly actuated custom loom for medium-density fabric, leading automation efforts for a first-of-its-kind manufacturing system.
• Authored wiring, connector, and electrical standards and specifications used across the automation program.
• Designed and developed multiple PCBAs for I/O and motion control supporting the loom's actuation systems.

Robotics Firmware Eng. & EE Lead at Carbon Robotics (2018-01 – 2018-10)

• Developed, integrated, and deployed 6-DOF robotic arm systems for industrial manufacturing applications.
• Led electrical team efforts, authoring wiring, connector, and electrical standards and specifications.
• Designed PCBAs for I/O and motion control, and developed firmware and driver software for 6-DOF arm control.

Senior Electrical Engineer at Megabots Inc. (2016-02 – 2017-11)

• Conceived, designed, and built the general-purpose control system for a large-scale robotic vehicle, owning the electrical architecture end to end and managing control-system design, integration, and development.
• Conceived, designed, and built remote-control UI interface systems for the vehicle, covering both remote operator control and in-vehicle control elements.
• Designed and implemented an engine control system for an LS3 gasoline engine and a communications topology using EtherCAT, integrating powertrain and distributed control.
• Managed electrical design and integration by authoring design specification and requirements documents, securing stakeholder buy-in, and built a custom onboard broadcast video solution for the program.

Technical Co-Founder at Animatrox Inc. (2013-12 – 2015-12)

• Co-founded and led technical development for an early-stage robotics venture alongside full-time engineering work, guiding architecture and product direction as a founding technical lead.

Senior Electrical Engineer at BD Diagnostics (2014-11 – 2016-01)

• Developed a universal motion controller for coordinated gantry, robotics, and mechanism control, and designed microprocessor circuitry including Cortex-M processors, SDRAM/DPRAM/Flash memory banks, motion controller ASICs, and an Ethernet switch.
• Designed controllers for SMX and Embedded Windows operating systems, coordinating architecture across software, hardware, and mechanical teams, and specified layout requirements with contract manufacturers.

Robotics Engineer at Engility Inc. (2013-10 – 2014-10)

• Developed automatic calibration algorithms using DSP and ROS for audio and vision sensors on unmanned vehicles, including an audio array sensor for anomalous-sound detection and localization.
• Developed automatic manipulation control through kinematics for valve manipulation and flight controls for quadrotor vehicles, and built manipulator arms for small flying platforms.

Robotics Research Engineer at Motile Robotics, Inc. (2008-08 – 2013-10)

• Conceived, designed, built, and programmed a hyper-redundant robotic tentacle manipulator for remote manipulation, developing a kinematics soft-core processor in VHDL — work recognized in Popular Science's 2010 Top Innovations and featured by the U.S. Army and Popular Science for advancing snake-robotics manipulation.
• Researched quadruped running gaits and developed a machine-learning terrain-adaptation algorithm using temporal/recurrent neural networks, captured via onboard telemetry and Vicon motion capture.
• Designed motor and motion control systems (BDC, DC, stepper, PZT) and algorithms for robot vision, multi-robot coordination, and kinematics across a portfolio of unmanned vehicle and manipulator projects.

Electrical Engineer II at BAE Systems (2007-05 – 2008-08)

• Managed a team of up to three electrical engineers, designing FPGA/VHDL and microprocessor board layouts and embedded VxWorks C/C++ firmware for IFF radar systems on littoral combat ships.

M.S. in Electrical Engineering – Lehigh University (2006-12)

B.S. in Electrical Engineering – Lehigh University (2005-05)