On Inspiring Leadership
Leadership styles are as varied as individual leaders themselves; different styles suit different people and different situations. The leadership style that resonates most with me is inspirational leadership. As the name suggests, inspirational leaders inspire those around them to work hard and achieve their potential. They provide their team with the confidence, the energy and […]
Meet Our Leaders: A Conversation with Scott Chaplin
What brought you to Shield AI? I was drawn to Shield AI because of its fast growth and my belief that this is a company that wants to continue to grow and transform. I felt like my background of transforming other companies might be something Shield AI would be interested in. In addition, I found […]
Designing to Optimize User Experience
Tell me about user experience (UX) design. What is it and what is the goal? User experience design can be thought of as the design of everything that is related to a user’s — or a customer’s — interaction with a company. It includes interactions with the company’s brand, its services, and its products. It […]
Building a Culture-Focused Team
What is “company culture”? And what makes it “good”? The first step to talking about company culture is to define it. Company culture is the behaviors, beliefs, interactions and attitudes that determine how work gets done at a company. A number of factors drive a positive company culture; the most important being that it’s authentic. […]
Shield AI Fundamentals: Trajectory Planning
We ask very difficult missions of Nova. For example, we ask it to explore a previously unknown building while detecting potential threats and evading them, respond to our user’s requests immediately, and to provide a live video stream and create a map in real time. Completing these missions in a performant, robust manner requires Nova […]
Shield Spotlight: Ward Shelley
Tell us about your journey to Shield AI. I first heard about Shield AI from a previous coworker who reached out to me and said, “Do you know anything about this company? I just joined and it seems like it might be a good fit for you.” The technology was really cool, but what most […]
Shield AI Fundamentals: On Mapping
The Role of Mapping in Autonomy As is evident in the name, the key component of any autonomous robotic system is its basic autonomy; its loop of perception, cognition, and action which enables a robot to determine what it should do, when it should do it, and how. In the following paragraphs, I will cover […]
Shield Spotlight Tristan Novak
How did you first become interested in engineering? I’ve always enjoyed building things, creating plans and designing something new. I grew up doing a lot of mechanical work and other hands-on activities, such as woodworking, metalworking, and automotive work. As early as elementary school I remember designing things and building them out of wood. I […]
What is Coordinated Exploration?
What is coordinated exploration? In the context of Shield AI, coordinated exploration corresponds to the deployment of multi-robot systems in order to explore an environment. These multi-robot systems collectively develop a structural model of that environment by moving through and navigating around it. Coordinated exploration refers to how the robots decide how to move through […]
Inside Hardware: Thermal System Design
Why do we design thermal systems? Often, when electronics are used they are not 100% efficient. Inefficiency translates to a non-trivial amount of energy released as heat. Thermal systems are often required to properly manage that heat. Why is it important? Without thermal management, eventually an engineered system won’t work anymore; it will overheat. This […]
