Kappi

My name is Kappi. I’ve been a Software Engineer in the AV industry in San Francisco for 6 years, but now I’m back at school.

This website catalogues what I get up to, please get in touch if you’d like.

Robots & Cars

For the last 6 years I worked at the Google Self Driving Car Project (now called Waymo) as a Software Engineer. I built the system that controls the vehicles’ positions at a fleet-wide level, and the algorithms to optimize their autonomous mileage collection and collective behaviour.

Earlier in my time at Waymo I worked on the Systems Engineering team, specifically on platform validation: brakes and steering. That, along with keeping my 50+ year old cars running – first a 1969 VW bus, and then a 1970 Mustang Grande — , gave me an ad-hoc foundation in the hardware side of robotics, which I am now working on expanding via a Masters in Robotics at ETH Zurich.

I’m hoping to gain the skills work on robots that interact with the natural environment in its extremes - in Space and in hard-to-reach places on Earth.

RESUME

Projects

Various things I work on / have worked on over the past few years.

Cleaners and Independent Allied Workers Union consulting - 2022

About Me

I grew up in various Southern African countries, mainly Botswana, thanks to having a conservation ecologist as a mother, and a wildlife veterinarian as a father.

Naturally I didn’t stop to ponder how enviable the lifestyle my parents gave me was, and rushed off to the USA for college. I studied Computer Science at Brown University, hoping to work on autonomous public transit for the developing world.

I headed further west after school- to California. I had a fabulous time, and also learned two things: 1) the developing world is not a priority in Silicon Valley, and 2) tech is not a magic bullet, and hard unglamorous work for policy change is mostly what will bring about green, efficient transport infrastructure development.