Sreevatsan Bhaskaran
Sr. Lidar Engineer (Module Lead)
Santa Clara
Summary
Sr. Lidar engineer with 5+ years experience in the self-driving car space. PhD graduate with 4+ years of interdisciplinary research experience, building a 2D MEMS based scanning lidar sensor. Authored a book titled, 'Autonomous Vehicle Lidar: A Tutorial' that has sold about 100+ copies worldwide. Available on Amazon (KDP).
Overview
11
11
years of professional experience
6
6
years of post-secondary education
Work History
Senior Hardware Engineer
Waymo Inc.
08.2022 - Current
- Evaluate performance of complete lidar assemblies and complex electromechanical subsystems.
- Developed bench characterization methods and accompanying physics-based models to ensure the top class data quality.
- Support definition of test and calibration procedures to ensure lidar data quality at scale.
- Design and oversee execution of lidar field measurements and structured tests.
- Assess impact of adverse environmental conditions on lidar performance through experimental design, data mining and analysis.
- Interface with lidar software engineers, perception software engineers and systems engineers to help triage field issues related to data quality.
Senior Lidar Engineer (Module Lead)
Zoox Inc.
12.2018 - 08.2022
- Led a team of 4 engineers and 2 technicians to successfully deliver lidar sensor HW to the fleet.
- Developing HW test assets for module and integration testing, end to end validation of lidar sub-system pipeline.
- Leading vendor discussions to design and develop new sensor features. Testing to assess usability and quantifying impact to autonomous driving.
- Debugging fleet issues - diagnose, triage, conduct thorough root cause analysis and finding optimal solution for large scale deployment to fleet.
- Collaborating with SW, Systems Engineering and Safety Engineering teams to iterate and refine sensor diagnostics requirement to conform to safety standards.
- Working closely with perception, calibration and other SW teams to identify, reproduce and resolve lidar challenges with retro reflectors and other lidar challengers like steam, fog, rain etc.
Graduate Research Assistant
Remote Sensing Group, Arizona State University
05.2013 - 10.2018
- PhD Dissertation:Integrated off-the shelf components, computer based control for MEMS scanner device, laser pulse duty cycle parameters, Time to Digital Control (TDC) board and Analog to Digital Converter(ADC) board to build a 2D MEMS based 1550nm lidar sensor
- Designed and executed tests to characterize the lidar system transmitted and return signal, quantify noise sources (noise analysis), optimizing signal flow path to improve accuracy of the depth estimate.
- Developed a novel digital signal processing algorithm to process raw lidar data to track flow structures in the atmosphere.
- Built a Doppler lidar model in MATLAB to evaluate the effects of noise in the estimate based on MLE technique using shape information of the return signal.
Education
Ph.D. - Mechanical Engineering
Arizona State University - GPA 4.0
Tempe, AZ 06.2014 - 10.2018
Master of Science - MS in Mechanical Engineering
Arizona State University, GPA 4.0
Tempe, AZ 08.2012 - 05.2014
Skills
Programing Skills - Python, Matlab, C
Version Control - GitHub
OS - Linux Ubuntu, Unix & Windows
Sensor Fusion Algorithms - Kalman Filter (KF), Extended-KF, Unscented-KF
Publications
Bhaskaran, Sreevatsan, et al. "Identifying and/or removing false positive detections from lidar sensor output." U.S. Patent 11740335 [Published 08-29-2023].
Bhaskaran, Zhou, Baab, Calhoun Autonomous Vehicle Lidar: A Tutorial,2019
Bhaskaran, Sreevatsan. Direct Detection Time of Flight Lidar Sensor System Design and a Vortex Tracking Algorithm for a Doppler Lidar. Diss. Arizona State University, 2018.
Bhaskaran, Sreevatsan, and Ronald Calhoun. "Aircraft vortex characterization by estimating the dominant modes from the return power spectrum of a Doppler Lidar." 9th AIAA Atmospheric and Space Environments Conference. 2017.
Bhaskaran, Sreevatsan, and Ronald Calhoun. "Approaches for Improved Doppler Estimation in Lidar Remote Sensing of Atmospheric Dynamics." EPJ Web of Conferences. Vol. 119. EDP Sciences, 2016.
Timeline
Senior Hardware Engineer
Waymo Inc.
08.2022 - Current
Senior Lidar Engineer (Module Lead)
Zoox Inc.
12.2018 - 08.2022
Ph.D. - Mechanical Engineering
Arizona State University - GPA 4.0
06.2014 - 10.2018
Graduate Research Assistant
Remote Sensing Group, Arizona State University
05.2013 - 10.2018
Master of Science - MS in Mechanical Engineering
Arizona State University, GPA 4.0
08.2012 - 05.2014