Brendan Rudberg

Mechanical Engineering @ Caltech — Controls & Robotics

I'm an approaching junior at Caltech with a love for building things that move. I'm originally from Seattle, Washington but left for california to escape the rain. I'm currently serving as the president of Caltech racing, a rapidly growing formula SAE team. I'm also currently doing research at the University of Iceland on control systems and building a double inverted pendulum!

Projects

Single Inverted Pendulum (DIPC)

Cart-mounted pendulum with energy-gated LQR swing-up and a Kalman filter for state estimation. Arduino Nano ESP32, NEMA 17 stepper, AMT10E2-V encoders, 1 m V-slot rail.

Caltech Racing — FSAE Electric

Electrical Integration on the 600 V accumulator and HV enclosure design. Incoming team president for 2026–27.

Autonomous Exploration Robot (ME/CS 129)

Raspberry Pi robot with Dijkstra-based path planning, multi-sensor fusion (ultrasonic, IR, NFC, gyroscope), and a multithreaded brain loop for any-time re-tasking.

Photonic LiDAR Research — UW Mo Li Group

SURF on distributed Bragg reflectors for photonic LiDAR beam steering. HSQ direct-write fabrication approach achieving 84% footprint reduction and 3× reflectance over a published baseline.