2025
Python, ROS, Robotics
I worked at J&J for a little over three years within their surgical robotics R&D department on the upcoming OTTAVA system. I had no real background in robotics, but my knowledge of Python and software was valuable enough for them to bring me onboard. Throughout my time at J&J I was able to prove my worth and ended up helping with controls engineering, system benchmarking, and was fortunate enough to travel to the Silicon Valley office in Santa Clara many times to try out some very cool technology. I’m unfortunately not allowed to share many details, but I promise it was some of the most interesting work I’ve contributed to.
My day-to-day at the Cincinnati office was mostly developing automation for robotic testing processes and sifting through enormous datasets from said tests. My main objective was turning these datasets into meaningful visualizations for the mechanical and design engineers to analyze and interpret. Often I’d work with these engineers to help them understand software so they themselves could learn to create their own visualizations with Python. Many of them became great coders and were able to write their own scripts to accomplish what they needed. I’m so proud 🥲
While I wrote a lot of code at J&J, I ended up doing a lot more hands-on work than I was expecting. I helped execute the robotic tests and experienced several animal labs where I had to get scrubbed up. I certainly won’t miss the smell of those labs. The trips out the Santa Clara were very hands on as well, where we utilized optical motion capture systems that required a lot of configuration along with manually controlling the robot to drive movement for benchmarking.
I made some great friends at J&J and continue to stay in touch with them. I enjoyed working with robots and hope I can one day return to the field. Who knows, maybe if I ever need surgery in the future they’ll use OTTAVA on me. If that’s the case, I won’t be worried because I know how bright the people that designed and built it are.
