Robert Rose says that Oregon State University’s engineering program is challenging, and admitted he had to study and work very hard to stay in the program. Due to some incredible faculty members and mentors supporting him through the difficult periods, he succeeded. Rose feels that Oregon State is unique in how modest it is; he considers it a research powerhouse for students that want to explore.
His eyes were opened to what could be accomplished beyond the university. He worked as a student “network assistant” in the ECE department at Oregon State, which involved everything from laying cables to configuring servers to end-user support. The experience allowed him to apply some of what he was learning in school, and to improve his communication and social skills.
When asked how attending Oregon State impacted his personal life, Rose added, “I met my wife at Oregon State! Maria has a B.F.A. in Graphic Design from OSU.” Prior to co-founding Reliable Robotics, in his role as Director of Flight Software at SpaceX, Robert was responsible for flight, ground, simulation and data management software, successfully launching and operating the first 10 Falcon-9 rockets, five Dragon spacecraft, and Grasshopper VTVL tests.
He led the development of the onboard flight software for the first commercial mission to the International Space Station, for which he received special recognition from NASA. While working at Tesla, he brought to market the first consumer automobile with fully unassisted self-driving capability. At Google [X], Rose led a team working on a secret project combining AI techniques with practical robotic systems to bring advanced machine perception and manipulation technologies to large vehicles.
Rose holds multiple patents, a B.S. in Computer Science, a B.S. in Computer Engineering, and an M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Oregon State. He believes that we are in the middle of a renaissance in aerospace engineering, and is excited to see the continued advances in autonomous home robots, ground vehicles, industrial vehicles, and unmanned aircraft. He feels that the benefits of automation are yet to be fully realized.