(Living the dream to work in those tales which inspire me to work in what I do)
#Robotics #TechInnovation #ProblemSolving #AutonomousSystems #Operations #AI #TechLeadership #InnovationInAction
Hey there, human! 👋 I'm John, but everyone at work calls me Beta.
I believe it's just as important to know who Beta is beyond the tech he builds—because, at the end of the day, it's people who are behind the world's greatest and most innovative creations. 🤖✨
A few fun facts about me:
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- Help making robot.com an Unicorn -> IPO -> Sell/keep shares/stock -> be rich.
- Become a goose farmer before by 2040 (But continue working/teaching). 🦢🌾
- Make and unicorn startup/idea having suffering/fun again. 🦄💡
- Build a Family 👨👩👧👦 💕 :3
Currently living the technical lead chapter in the role of Head of Ai&Robotics Department at robot.com previously aka. Kiwibot
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At robot.com I thrive at the intersection of hardware, software, and operations, constantly navigating the complexities of autonomous systems, robotics integration, and real-time performance optimization. From ensuring seamless deployments to fine-tuning teleoperation and navigation systems, I'm all about transforming challenges into solutions. Whether collaborating with multidisciplinary teams to address sensor issues or diving into data analytics to improve OKRs, my focus remains on elevating systems and people to their highest potential. My role is a balance of technical expertise, strategic thinking, and hands-on problem solving, all aimed at pushing the boundaries of what's possible. |
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I Love to inovate and elevate the future of robotics with great team.
Make the best autonomous driving system for our beloved Kiwibots, have fun and learn measured by:
- Achieve 100% autonomy rate across all locations and environments 🎯
- Maximize safety and reliability with <0.1% intervention rate per 1,000km 🛡️
- Zero critical incidents through advanced sensor fusion and predictive modeling 🚀
- Build relationships and train next-gen models for autonomous driving 🤖
- Keep my team updated with the latest trends in robotics and AI 🧠
I've divided my skills into two verticals since 2020, when my role transitioned into a technical manager position. This was a complete shift in my career, though each aspect has been fundamental to the other, and I face unique challenges in both domains.
- 🎯 Strategic team and priority management aligned with company objectives
- 📊 Development of departmental strategies and methodologies to achieve goals (OKRs, KPIs) that align with business objectives
- 🤖 AI-driven optimization of applications and processes through innovative methodologies
- 📚 Continuous team growth through ongoing learning and active participation in the robotics community
- 🚀 Leadership in fostering innovation and maintaining high-performance standards
Here's my Managment style and framework and How to work with me.
Let's be real - I'm not going to claim expertise in every framework under the sun. I don't believe in that mythical "unicorn" developer who masters everything like the Avatar. Instead, I'll be transparent about my core competencies and the tools I work with regularly.
- 💻 Languages: C++ (Intermediate - I've shed tears but built robust applications), Python (Extensive experience and strong command).
- 🔧 IDEs: VSCode, Cursor, and any LLM agent essential for rapid prototyping, unit testing, documentation - the essentials since OpenAI revolutionized our world.
- 📈 Data: Core database queries for building reports, dashboards, and metrics. The platform? They're all similar after a few days of learning. Examples: Tableau, Grafana, Google Studio, Looker (Not my favorite).
- 🤖 Robotics Tools: ROS2, ROS, Gazebo, Vriz, and the classic MATLAB (Still relevant?).
- 📚 Libraries: YOLO, OpenCV (I know it inside out), NVIDIA Platforms: Orin, TX2, Xavier.
- 🐳 Containerization & DevOps: Docker, container orchestration, and deployment strategies for scalable robotics applications.
- 🔌 Embedded Systems: Hands-on experience with microcontrollers, real-time systems, and hardware-software integration.
- 🧠 AI & ML: Experience with neural networks, computer vision, and sensor fusion for autonomous systems.
- ☁️ Cloud & Infrastructure: GCP services for robotics applications, edge computing, and distributed systems.
- 🏗️ General: Scalable software architectures, application deployment processes, CI/CD automation, unit testing, and all the essential modern development practices.
As they say, seeing is believing. Just visit kiwibot.com or robot.com to see the results of my team's and colleagues' work - and by extension, mine. I take pride in leading a part of this journey and building, alongside amazing people, a robotics platform that collectively travels more than 5 times around the Earth each year.
Beyond technical and management skills, I've developed a unique set of leadership capabilities that drive innovation and team success:
- Strategic Vision: Translating complex technical challenges into actionable business strategies
- Cross-functional Collaboration: Bridging the gap between engineering, operations, and business teams
- Innovation Management: Fostering a culture of continuous improvement and cutting-edge development
- Technical Mentorship: Growing the next generation of robotics engineers and AI specialists
- Stakeholder Management: Effectively communicating technical concepts to non-technical audiences
- Risk Management: Balancing innovation with operational safety and reliability
- Resource Optimization: Maximizing team productivity while maintaining high-quality standards
- Crisis Management: Leading teams through technical challenges and operational disruptions
- Technical Decision Making: Making informed choices between competing technical solutions
- Team Scaling: Building and growing high-performing technical teams (Hire is hard as FUCK!)
- Industry Evangelism: Representing the company's technical vision in the robotics community
Here's my journey through almost a decade of innovation, leadership, and technical excellence across diverse projects and industries.
It's better reading backwards to follow the natural chronological order of my journey.
The call came on a random Tuesday afternoon, completely out of the blue. "Hey John, what are you up to? Come work with us, but it's not an engineering position - it's to be a delivery guy, and maybe something technical will come up. Come and give it a try." My friend's voice carried that infectious enthusiasm that made saying no impossible. And just like that, from one moment to the next, I found myself two days later in a strange country, surrounded by strange people, working on what would become the most defining chapter of my professional life.
When I joined Kiwibot, I started as an operations coordinator - yes, you read that right, nothing technical at all! My days consisted of schlepping robots to locations, deploying them, picking them up, and playing diplomat between kitchens and clients. It was equal parts exhilarating and exhausting because I was juggling this new adventure while maintaining my technical consulting work with other clients during early mornings and late nights. I still don't know how I managed to keep all the balls in the air - I survived on minimal sleep and lost a concerning amount of weight! But after three months of this chaotic dance, I gradually phased out my other commitments until Kiwibot became my sole focus.
The real turning point came when I managed to bridge the gap between operations and engineering. There was some initial friction, but I saw technical challenges that I knew I could solve, and I convinced the engineering team to give me a shot. That's how I transitioned from robot wrangler to actual engineer at Kiwibot, diving into environment classification, sidewalk analysis, and programming solutions that went far beyond basic computer vision.
Years flew by, team members came and went, and through a combination of accumulated experience, built relationships, and being the most senior member, I found myself with an unexpected opportunity: leadership. By 2020, I was facing a completely new challenge that I thought I understood but quickly realized was a whole different beast. I had the vision, but this was a complete career pivot with challenges and solutions that, while not purely technical, would become inseparable from my technical work going forward.
Fast forward to today, and here I am as the Technical Leader in robotics and AI, with deep expertise in autonomous navigation, perception, and real-time systems. As Head of AI & Robotics at Kiwibot, I've led the development and scaling of our complete autonomy stack—sensor fusion, semantic perception (CNNs, Mask R-CNN), ROS2-based planning and control—powering urban delivery robots toward Level 4 autonomy. I manage multidisciplinary engineering teams, drive robust deployment pipelines (C++/Python, ROS), and align technical innovation with business goals to deliver scalable, safe, and efficient robotic systems in real-world environments.
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| Kiwibot's AI-Driven Autonomy Stack in Action | Scalable Autonomy: Live Supervision of a Robot Delivery Fleet" |
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| Semantic-Grade LiDAR Scans for Environment Understanding & Navigation | Precision Mapping in Complex Environments: 3D LiDAR SLAM in Action | 3D LiDAR Navigation: Dense Mapping, Semantics & Path Execution |
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| Robust Urban Autonomy Through Semantic Understanding and Map-Based Localization | Visual-Semantic Perception Aligned with OSM for Urban Geofencing and Navigation | Geofencing Through Semantic Mapping for Autonomous Path Restriction |
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| Real-time vehicle counting in Medellin, Colombia, leveraging smart cameras to measure billboard audience and advertising impact |
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| Kraken system for vertical inspection of water quality parameters | Kraken system deployed in the field, Colombia, Tota Lagoon |
We've all been there - that moment when you're staring at the ceiling thinking "what now?" I found myself in that exact position, with no financial support and a growing pile of bills that seemed to multiply overnight. In desperation, I turned to a professor who had become a friend, someone who had evaluated my thesis work. I asked him about any projects or opportunities that would challenge me to create, program, and solve problems using what I knew how to do (computer vision, mostly). Thanks to him, I landed a gig at a company offering software-as-a-service, and I hit it off perfectly with their CTO at the time. I ended up freelancing several projects that today a student could probably knock out in a few hours with some AI agent or GPT - but back then, this was cutting-edge stuff!
There, I had the opportunity to work on training YOLO models for optical character recognition - yes, you read that right! Back then, it wasn't nearly as straightforward as it is now, and the models weren't exactly precise. We wanted to design a system for vehicle diagnostic centers to measure how long the entire vehicle evaluation process took, which required identifying license plates (ALPR) and then character-by-character analysis to trigger a video capture system. I had an absolute blast with this project - from capturing and labeling thousands of images, to training models, to playing around with primitive OpenCV, Dlib, and FFmpeg. Later, I learned that this same system we deployed was used as a service by the traffic department to issue traffic tickets to vehicles that didn't comply with their restriction day. Helping build something to catch traffic violators definitely satisfied a bit of my inner troublemaker! 😈
And of course, there was my entrepreneurial phase! That spirit is still alive, and I know I'll pick it up again someday. It wasn't exactly during these dates, but I tried working with a partner at the time on agricultural projects and university vending machines. But like every story that touches on these themes, my partner left me hanging at one point with several projects ready to launch and money already disbursed from people who trusted us. Some projects that actually saw the light of day included a system for inspecting surgical screws and plates, where we had to categorize and qualify everything from color to characteristics and defects of these components. Other projects also came to life, though they're not quite as cool or relevant to showcase and describe here - some of those repositories are still up on my profile if you want to take a look.
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| Social distancing checker system for malls and security cameras (Created during COVID season when I was bored) | ALPR/OCR for Vehicle Diagnostic Centers | Inspection tools for surgical screws and plates |
Let me be honest - I wasn't exactly a prodigy in university! I was organized and delivered solid work, but while I wasn't terrible academically, I was far from being the star student. What really defined me was being someone who was extremely, almost obsessively organized with an eye for detail. My university years were a rollercoaster of equal parts joy and struggle. I worked as a teaching assistant and ran several tutoring sessions in electronic circuits, logic circuits, and programming - which probably taught me more than I taught others!
At my university (PUJ-Colombia), I found my tribe in the Robotics group, where we competed in various categories and competitions, both national and international, on the VEX platform. After taking numerous robotics courses and working on various projects like a differential drive cart and a drawing arm, I developed a deep love for creating in robotics that naturally drew me to this group. I still vividly remember the electric excitement of almost winning an international competition when we went head-to-head against what today might be the talent leading robotics in various sectors. Those were the days!
For my undergraduate thesis, I dove deep into computer vision. Back then, there were no programming agents, no ChatGPT, and precious little guidance on these topics, so I had to devour mountains of literature to build an aquaculture net inspection system. The program ran on a UAV (Underwater Vehicle) as part of a thesis that one of my advisors directed for his postdoctoral work, focused on inspecting water quality parameters in aquatic bodies. This work would later continue at Kraken under his permission - full circle moment!
After finishing my undergraduate work and having taken several coterminal or master's level courses in advance, I decided to continue with my master's studies. However, due to personal and economic circumstances at the time, I couldn't complete the final stage. This still weighs on me a bit, but nowadays, given what I do, I question: who the hell cares about another degree? I think experience and knowing how to actually do things matters far more. Anyway, during my university period, I enjoyed it immensely. More than learning what I use today, it was the formation that taught me a methodological process, the rigor and discipline to approach engineering challenges, and it left me with several of my best friends, acquaintances, and advisors that I count on today.
ACA FLATA INCLUIR IMAGENES !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
While I love what I do, who I work with, and where I work, I'm always open to new opportunities and growth. Like evolution itself, staying in one place means stagnation. I'm constantly seeking to explore and engage with new opportunities, initiatives, and ventures in:
- Robotics & Autonomous Systems 🤖
- Industrial Automation & Smart Manufacturing 🏭
- Software as a Service (SaaS) Solutions 💻
- Academic Research & Education 🎓
- AI & Machine Learning Innovation 🧠
- Technical Leadership & Team Building 👥
- Defense & Military Technology Projects 🛡️
- Conference Speaking & Technical Workshops 🎤
- Innovative Startup Partnerships & Ventures 💫