KODY BROWN · MECHANICAL ENGINEER · ROBOTICS HARDWARE · AI TOOLING

Steel & software.

Thirteen years of robots and vehicles — the load-bearing hardware they ride on, and the AI-powered engineering tools that ship them faster.

SEE THE WORK ▾
13+ YEARS IN ROBOTICS & VEHICLE HARDWARE
4 U.S. PATENTS ISSUED
AI ENGINEERING TOOLS SHIPPED TO MY TEAM — CAD↔PLM, FEA AUTOMATION
FEA→TEST ANALYSIS BACKED BY PHYSICAL TEST, CONCEPT THROUGH PRODUCTION

HOW I ENGINEER

Idea to scale, owned end to end.

Every company on this page hired me to run the same loop. My side projects aim AI at every stage of it.

  1. 01CONCEIVE

    Turn ambiguous needs into requirements and an architecture worth betting on.

  2. 02DESIGN

    Package the system, define the interfaces, control the tolerances.

  3. 03ANALYZE

    FEA and hand calcs aimed at the riskiest assumption first.

  4. 04BUILD

    Prototype early; work shoulder-to-shoulder with machinists and vendors.

  5. 05VALIDATE

    Tests designed to answer decisions — models correlated against real hardware.

  6. 06SCALE

    DFM, tooling, suppliers, and listening to what the field sends back.

SHT 1 OF 42024 — PRESENTSOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, CA

MYTRA

STAFF MECHANICAL DESIGN ENGINEER

Warehouse robotics: a dense 3D storage grid run by mobile robots that carry loaded pallets. Every tray the system runs on is my design — the load-bearing interface between the goods and the robot, across two hardware generations.

  • Driving the architecture change from a multi-piece riveted assembly to a single piece of stamped steel — a large unit-cost reduction on prototype tooling, with more ahead at production volume.
  • Resolved a press-tonnage infeasibility on a compressed timeline: structural analysis proved a lower-strength, more formable steel held every design margin, and a geometry redesign cut forming tonnage — opening a broader stamping supply base.
  • Designed two iterations of the mobile-robot chassis: thorough FEA drove major stiffness gains at lower cost.
  • Support ongoing qualification with analysis and test — FEA and fatigue analysis predicting cycle life well beyond design-life requirements, correlated against physical durability testing.
  • Built AI engineering tools the whole team adopted: CAD↔PLM integration shipped default-on, automated FEA workflows.
Single-piece stamped steel pallet tray on its test fixture
STAMPED TRAY ON TEST FIXTURE
Mytra mobile robot, front view
THE MOBILE ROBOT
STRUCTURE Riveted assembly → one stamping Architecture change driven to program of record.
SIM-TEST CORRELATED AT FULL PAYLOAD U.S. PATENT 12,679,649
SHT 2 OF 42021 — 2024SAN FRANCISCO, CA

CHEF ROBOTICS

SENIOR → STAFF MECHANICAL ENGINEER

Robots that portion food on live production lines — washdown-rated, human-safe, running next to gowned line workers. I led the mechanical lifecycle from prototype to paying customers.

  • Selected and integrated high-force, fast-actuating IP67 pneumatic actuation that carried the entire tooling family. Three issued patents on the utensils it drives.
  • Designed the quick-change tool interface: precision wire-EDM tapered dovetails held to tight profile tolerances — swaps in seconds, food-safe, no loose parts.
  • Validated operator safety to OSHA/ISO pinch-point requirements with instrumented load-cell testing, then redesigned clearances to close every gap.
  • Stood up PLM and MES from scratch; built the in-house line producing multiple robots per week.
Chef Robotics arms working a live food production line beside gowned workers
DEPLOYED SYSTEMS ON A LIVE FOOD LINE
Quick-change tool interface diagram with tapered dovetails
QUICK-CHANGE INTERFACE
Patented food utensil mechanism detail
PATENTED UTENSIL MECHANISM
SURVIVES DAILY INDUSTRIAL WASHDOWN US 12,186,916 B2 · US D1,074,307 · US D1,085,811
SHT 3 OF 42017 — 2021FOSTER CITY, CA

ZOOX

MECHANICAL ENGINEER

Purpose-built autonomous vehicles, before anyone had seen one. I engineered two generations of L3 test-vehicle platforms — the mules that put production sensors at production positions.

  • Developed IP67-equivalent camera enclosures: sealing, venting, and moisture control that eliminated water ingress and lens fog on-vehicle.
  • Designed and FEA-validated rollover outriggers for vehicle-dynamics testing — the hardware between a bad test and a bad day.
  • Built robotic durability test cells and the structural frame of a full-vehicle dynamometer test buck.
  • Delivered hundreds of tight-tolerance CNC parts through internal and external shops.
Zoox robotaxi crossing a San Francisco intersection
THE ROBOTAXI — AND THE TEST MULES THAT GOT IT THERE
Zoox retrofit test vehicle with full roof sensor rig
RETROFIT SENSOR MULE
Zoox test vehicle on snow with rollover outriggers fitted
WINTER TESTING — OUTRIGGERS FITTED
SENSORS AT PRODUCTION POSITIONS AND TOLERANCES IP67-EQUIVALENT OPTICAL ENCLOSURES
SHT 4 OF 42013 — 2017SANTA CLARITA, CA

DEL WEST

MECHANICAL ENGINEER

Precision valvetrain components for racing engines and aerospace — where I learned that manufacturing is physics, not paperwork.

  • Failure analysis and FEA on high-stress engine components, driving corrections back into production.
  • Designed and built an isothermal forge cell: heated upper and lower dies hold a titanium blank at forming temperature, then press its head into the valve profile in a single stroke — forming the alloy hot enough to flow instead of crack.
  • Integrated a robotically loaded CNC cell — UR5, conveyor, gripper, PLC safety — for lights-out machine tending.
  • Approved shop drawings for GD&T and manufacturability.
Titanium racing valve in front of a cylinder head
TITANIUM VALVE, MOTORSPORT VALVETRAIN
TITANIUM & STEEL VALVETRAIN · MOTORSPORT DUTY ROBOTIC MACHINE TENDING · PLC SAFETY INTERLOCKS

SIDE WORK — AI, AIMED AT THE LOOP

After hours, I build the software
I wish existed at work.

Products in development, built with the same stack I put to work at the day job — Claude, MCP, CAD APIs. Each card carries a small, live piece of the real thing.

IN DEVELOPMENT

StatIQ

Structural analysis that shows its work — sketch a structure, get solver-verified results with every force explained. Below: a live beam solver.

LIVE — SIMPLY SUPPORTED BEAM
SOLUTION — STATIC EQUILIBRIUM L = 2m · a = 0.84m · b = 1.16m
ΣMA = 0 R2 = P a over L = (55N)(0.84m) over 2m = 23.1N
ΣFy = 0 R1 = P − R2 = 55N − 23.1N = 31.9N
M(x = a) Mmax = P a b over L = (55N)(0.84m)(1.16m) over 2m = 26.8N·m

MOMENT BALANCE ABOUT A GIVES R2 · VERTICAL EQUILIBRIUM GIVES R1 · PEAK MOMENT SITS UNDER THE LOAD

REACT · RUST/WASM SOLVER · GEOMETRIC CONSTRAINTS

LAUNCHING SOON
CONCEPT PROTOTYPE

penroom

The whiteboard, if the whiteboard did the math. Rough ink comes back drafted, dimensioned, and solved.

CANVAS · VISION AI · DETERMINISTIC SOLVER CORE

FULL DEMO COMING SOON
IN DEVELOPMENT

The closed loop: CAD → FEA → Claude → CAD

At work, CAD geometry already flows into Ansys on its own, and AI runs the studies and reads the results. What's left is the return leg — analysis proposing the next geometry change back in CAD. Below, the loop runs on a demo bracket with a real solver.

ONSHAPE API · ANSYS AUTOMATION · MCP · CLAUDE

ASK ME ABOUT IT
IN DEVELOPMENT

Onshape drawing agent

An AI agent inside Onshape that reads drawings and writes them: it checks the GD&T, then drafts what's missing — datums, feature control frames, callouts a machinist can build to.

ONSHAPE API · ASME Y14.5 · CLAUDE

FULL DEMO COMING SOON

SMALL SLICES ON PURPOSE — THE FULL PRODUCTS ARE STILL IN THE SHOP.

Welding the Baja chassis, sparks flying
Instrumented shock dynamometer built for damper characterization
CUSTOM SHOCK DYNO — SENIOR PROJECT

ORIGINS — UC DAVIS, 2013

Baja SAE co-captain, chassis lead. I designed the frame in SolidWorks and welded it myself — then built a semi-active suspension for my senior project because the passive one felt like a missed opportunity. It's been drawings and steel ever since.

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