Julian Haug
innovative, entrepreneurial, extrovert
Swiss sensors, delivered from Mexico
Orchestration, setup and auditing of a local automated production line, suppliers and warehouse for the American HVAC market.
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As SOP with quick rampup approached, it became obvious that a resident engineer is required to make things go smooth. Sensirion eliged me, right after completing my probation period, to get the job done on the other side of the world. Bridging the cultural gap and the language barrier in little time, the whole team focused on getting production up and running. On the main site, challenges ranged from delayed & broken shipments over limited engineering capabilities to misaligned management. Meanwhile, two suppliers had to be developed from first impression "they are not exactly a perfect fit" to "we consistently get high quality and volume". While being late for SOP, thanks to the strong support from our HQ in Switzerland, we catched up on deliveries during ramp-up phase and even surpassed customer expectations.
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I onboarded to the resident engineer role for the chance to live and work abroad for four months (neither too long nor too short). The technical responsibility alongside the high pace of the project and many suppliers with high stakes was very motivating. Formally, I was not to touch anything on the foreign equipment, and theoretically covering a role without tangible deliverables. However, I am proud to this day how all involved parties, counting 50 heads easily, were brought from a stale, unresponsive avoidant attitude to communicate openly, work proactively and cover huge gaps in short time. So I felt to be really making a difference, despite I just went to Mexico with nothing more than my personal bankcards, an official recommendation to avoid the country and a note "the rental is too expensive" from our travel department. No spanish, no guns and no big title, I went there and figured solutions by simply by understanding, informing, and calling back on people. Besidees work, I enjoyed a great time, thanks to the friendly Mexican people with an attitude for good food. I will take such an opportunity anytime again.
Imitation learning on a 12-ton excavator
Captivated by the early successes of Reinforcement Learning (RL), I was determined to try the promising Imitation Learning approach, where the actor is trained on expert motion data to generalize to optimal trajectories. I was honored to build on an impressive techstack built by generations of students, postdocs and technical staff.
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The hardware (incl. plenty of sensors and a retrofitted extra hydraulic circle) of HEAP is used to record data, and control the excavator. Simulation models are detailed for controller testing and tuning. --- So I could jump right into recording data, and preparing it for training. Obviously, this is more involved (set up pipeline, understand and employ an expert, cleaning the dataset...). Finally the legwork was overcome and training could begin. Using robomimic, multiple 12tons! fancy menzimuck legged robot, fun to ride with...
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Overall a very promising project with technically savy supervisors, I had to realize that failing to plan is planning to fail. Too ambitious towards the end, could not let go when just a dataset was ready. Wnated to proof useful, actually see IL working and also run a selfmade algorithm on the 12-ton excavator. Problem: Just too much work, too many things not working, and actually the thesis required paperwork, even some scientific insights inside...
ARIS - reach for the sky and beyond
With the vision of a flying rocket and a great adventure, I started out as the Avionics' mechanical engineer. I volunteered to design and implement the airbrake system. After half a year, tensions in the team arose, responsibility diffused and I jumped in as teamlead to resolve the issues. I managed to get everyone aligned again and motivate the team to focus on the mission
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Member of the ARIS rocket team, aiming to build a rocket to fly at the Spaceport America Cup (SPAC) to an exact height of 10’000 feet. As team leader, I was responsible for the Avionics subteam. I was additionally tasked with the design and implementation of the mission critical airbrakes. Our project ‘HEIDI’ reached 2nd rank in its category and 4th rank over all 123 international teams competing at SPAC.