Mihail Pivtoraiko is a Co-founder and President at Aptonomy, Inc. Previously, he was a Post Doctoral Researcher at the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics, University of Pennsylvania. He received his Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Robotics from Carnegie Mellon University in 2005 and 2012, respectively, and his B.S. degree in Computer Engineering and Physics, along with a minor in French, from Portland State University in 2003. Mihail has over ten years of experience in field work with autonomous mobile robots, developing and testing the planning, control, perception and state estimation algorithms. He has participated in DARPA projects (PerceptOR, LAGR), as well as the Jet Propulsion Laboratory Mars Technology Program. He spent over a year at JPL performing research in mobile manipulation and instrument placement for planetary rovers. Mihail is a co-investigator and primary proposal author of an awarded four-year program to study autonomous rover navigation under the auspices of the JPL Strategic University Research Partnership. Mihail’s research interests include improving the performance and reliability of mobile robots operating outdoors or inside the home. In particular, his focus is on motion planning and control, as well as their integration with perception, estimation and other systems that enable capable robots.