Josemiliano Cohen

Education

Academic Background & Training

University of Texas at Austin

Bachelor of Engineering: Electrical & Computer Engineering

Minor: Robotics

Aug 2023 – May 2027 | Third-Year Student

Technical Core: Embedded Systems and Computer Architecture
Organizations: Texas Robotics (Research Mentor), UT SHPE (Intramural Sports Chair), IEEE (Member), Longhorn Boxing (Board)

El Paso Community College

Associate of Arts: Multidisciplinary Studies

Aug 2020 – May 2023

Pursued High School and Associate's degree simultaneously, graduated high school with 60+ college credits

Cathedral High School

High School Diploma

Aug 2019 – May 2023 | GPA: 4.4

FIRST Robotics Co-Founder & Vice-Captain
Chinese Club Founder & Vice-President
Student Body Secretary and Marketer
National Science Honor Society Service Manager
Varsity Tennis, Cross Country, Band

Research & Experience

Work Experience and Leadership

Texas Robotics @ UT Austin

FRI Autonomous Driving Research Mentor

Dec 2025 - Present | Part-time | Austin, TX

Lead the autonomous driving software research stream within UT Austin's Texas Robotics FRI program, mentoring 30 students in ROS2, Docker, SLAM, and autonomous navigation policy development through imitation learning and reinforcement learning
Guide students through full-stack autonomy integration, debugging, and deployment across perception, controls, and software workflows on a custom autonomous vehicle platform
Designed, built, and validated 18 1/10th-scale RoboRacer platforms, later adopted in a UT computer science course, integrating Jetson Orin, LiDAR, Pi camera, VESC controller, IMU, and a custom PCB power system with MOSFET switching, protection diodes, and buck converters for end-to-end ML navigation
Authored hardware assembly guides, test procedures, and platform documentation in MkDocs; publication submission to Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) in progress

→ Hardware Assembly Guide

Texas Robotics RoboRacer platform screenshot

Autonomous Mobile Robotics Laboratory (AMRL) @ UT Austin

Robotics Researcher

Aug 2025 - Present

Designed and fabricated a high-speed (70 mph) autonomous off-road ground vehicle equipped with NVIDIA Jetson Orin compute platforms and Livox Mid-360 LiDAR sensors
Integrated precision motor controllers and advanced sensor suites to enable robust, real-time perception and navigation for next-generation autonomous robotics
Engineered fully embedded, Linux-based computing payload for Boston Dynamics Spot with hot-swappable, multi-source power distribution system
Assisted with social navigation data collection and contributed to development of RMA policies for autonomous navigation in crowded, dynamic environments
Leveraged SSH-based workflows for remote development, testing, and deployment to achieve sustained, compute-independent autonomy
Ultimate goal: navigating dense, dynamic environments such as crowded university campuses

FTC Team 13948 Cathedral Robotics

Co-Founder & Vice-President

Jan 2020 - July 2023 | El Paso, TX

Co-founded high school FIRST robotics team, led student members, and helped establish the team structure, training, and technical direction
Designed a TAPPS Regional Championship robot using laser-cut steel, extrusion, Raspberry Pi, ASIC motor controllers, and Java-based autonomous navigation with vision and encoders
Taught myself Java to build the robot software stack, then taught it to student teammates to support programming and autonomous development

Projects

Featured Technical Work

Featured 3 photos

Spot Payload

2025 – Present

Engineered a fully embedded, Linux-based computing payload for Boston Dynamics' Spot, featuring a hot-swappable, multi-source power distribution system with MOSFET-based automatic switching between shore power, onboard batteries, and Spot's native rail. Schottky diodes provide reverse current protection. Designed two independent power rails: a 19V rail for the Jetson Orin AGX and a 12V rail powering a Microsoft Azure Kinect, LiDAR, and a USB hub for LiDAR Ethernet connectivity - ensuring isolated, stable power delivery across all compute and sensor loads.

Developing a socially-aware autonomous navigation stack on ROS 2 to enable Spot to navigate crowded human environments, with ongoing research targeting the 'frozen robot problem' - where conventional planners stall in dense pedestrian flows due to overly conservative collision avoidance.

Linux Embedded Systems Power Distribution SSH Workflows Boston Dynamics Spot Azure Kinect LiDAR

Featured 2 photos

1/10 Autonomous Vehicle Platform

2025 – 2026

Designed, built, and tested 1/10th scale autonomous vehicles as a comprehensive learning platform for the 30 student FRI Autonomous Driving CS course. Integrates hardware design, embedded systems, computer vision, and machine learning with NVIDIA Jetson Orin, Hokuyo LiDAR, Pi camera, VESC controller, and IMU. Fully documented the platform for publication at the Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) conference.

Mentoring undergraduate researchers on multi-agent coordination for the RoboRacer fleet, guiding development of decentralized planning algorithms for cooperative autonomous driving scenarios.

→ Hardware Assembly Guide

Autonomous Driving Machine Learning Computer Vision Embedded Systems Hardware Design

High-Speed Autonomous Off-Road Vehicle

2025 – Present

Designed and programmed a high-speed (70 mph) autonomous off-road ground vehicle with NVIDIA Jetson Orin and Livox Mid-360 LiDAR, integrating motor controllers and sensor suites for real-time perception and navigation. Developing and training ML-based autonomous navigation policies directly on the platform.

Autonomous Systems NVIDIA Jetson Orin LiDAR Machine Learning ROS2 Robotics

4 photos

FTC Robot Prototypes

2023

Designed, manufactured, and programmed a FIRST Tech Challenge regionals robot for Team 13948. Two full prototypes with mechanical design, electrical systems, and autonomous Java programming.

→ Watch on YouTube

Java Raspberry Pi CAD Robotics

Joystick-Controlled Robot Car

Feb 2026

Designed, wired, and programmed an Arduino-based robot car for ME 350R Robot Mechanism Design. Integrated an L298N motor driver, DC motors, and joystick for real-time directional control with smooth speed interpolation. Focused on cable management, structural integrity, and clean chassis aesthetics.

Arduino Mechatronics C++ Motor Control Embedded Systems Mechanical Design

Space Invaders (TI MSPM0G3507)

Nov 2024 – Dec 2024

Playable Space Invaders built from scratch on the TI MSPM0 microcontroller. Two languages, start menu, score tracking, leaderboards. Custom sprites, DAC sound output, ADC potentiometer control, ST7735 LCD display.

C MSPM0G3507 DAC ADC ST7735 LCD Embedded Systems

2 photos + video

Traffic Light Controller (TI MSPM0G3507)

Oct 2024

4-way intersection traffic controller using finite state machines and array of structs to prioritize vehicular and pedestrian flow. Validated with Logic Analyzer and Oscilloscope.

C MSPM0G3507 FSM Embedded Systems

Miniature Robot Leg

2025

Designed and fabricated a miniature robot leg for PyTorch-based locomotion research. Testbed for training neural networks with reinforcement learning and biomimetic movement patterns.

PyTorch Robotics Machine Learning 3D Printing Motion Control

Slider Crank Mechanism

2025

Designed and analyzed a slider crank mechanism for Robot Mechanism Design. Mechanical design, kinematic analysis, and CAD modeling to efficiently convert rotational to linear motion.

Mechanical Design Kinematics CAD Robotics

Gmail Job Application Extractor

May 2025 – Aug 2025

Java app that scans Gmail for job application emails, extracts company, role, and location using OpenAI GPT API, and exports structured data to Excel. Gmail API integration with robust filtering and error handling.

↑ Example of the Excel output generated

→ GitHub

Java OpenAI API Gmail API Apache POI

AI eBay Live MX Arbitrage Assistant