Odalys Benitez

Hello :) I'm Odalys! Thank you for visiting my page. A little about me - I want to work towards creating a thriving existence for all. As a first-generation Latina, I care a lot about making a positive impact in the world, and continuously trying to find ways to align my work with my values. I hope this intention is evident through my project work.

Also, I'm currently working as a software engineer. Prior to my current role, I graduated from Olin College of Engineering with a concentration in Robotics. If you would like to connect with me or have any questions, please feel free to reach out!

Get in Touch Resume

About

Name:Odalys Benitez
Study:Olin College of Engineering
Degree:B.Eng with concentration in Robotics
Mail:obenite11@gmail.com

Skills

Software Development

Python, ROS2, Git, Docker, Big Query, SQL

Project Management

Jira, PowerBI, Agile Methodologies, Notion

Design Software

Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Lightroom

Mechanical Design

Solidworks, Onshape

Experience

July 2022 - July 2024

RightHand Robotics
Software Engineer 1, Software Engineer 2
August 2021 - May 2022

Olin College of Engineering - Undergraduate Research Project with General Dynamics Electric Boat
Paid researcher
June 2021 - August 2021

Machina Labs
Robotics Engineering Intern
June 2019 - August 2019

Rolling Robots
Robotics Instructor

Resume

Portfolio

Solar Tracker at Woodland Harvest Mountain Farm
I built a pan/tilt solar tracker for a 1kW solar array, allowing maximized energy output on an off-grid farm. The system is designed to be a beautiful addition to the farm’s land, and allow for sustainable, reliable power.
Solar Tracker at Woodland Harvest Mountain Farm
While living on a farm in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina, my friend Leon and I decided to upgrade our recently constructed solar array (meant to meet the electricity needs for 15 engineering students), and build a solar tracker. A solar tracker is meant to maximize the amount of power generated by the solar array by always pointing it in the direction where the sun is strongest. This was a great avenue for us to gain more robotics project experience, as well as contribute something to the farm that was so graciously deciding to host students for two pandemic semesters.

The panel situation originally!

Before building and planning, we took the time to get acquainted with stakeholders who would be using the solar tracker during and long after we're gone. This mainly included the farm owners, and students. Through interviewing and casual conversations, we came away with some important findings.

We should try our best to build the tracker with materials we can find on the farm, in an effort to make the tracker as sustainable as possible and in alignment with the farm owner's values.

We should build the tracker with consideration of the environment and climate. It should be resilient in the face of strong winds, rain, and changing terrain.

We should position the tracker in an ideal location where it will be easy to connect to the electrical system in the house, and where it will not obstruct any views of animals or gardens.

We should try our best to build the tracker in a way that will be easy to repair if anything goes wrong after we leave.

After grounding our project in user-centered principles, we set out to design, plan, and build. We designed the initial version of the solar tracker mount by taking inspiration from existing solar trackers. As we progressed in our design, we ran calculations on various things. We ensured that the hinges we picked to rotate the mount (pan/tilt) could sustain the load of the panels, and we ensured that the linear actuators we picked would enable the full range of motion for the solar tracker.

After we finalized the design and parts list, we began putting in the physical labor of love for such a large project. We dug post holes two meters down, debarked two huge tree trunks, drilled straight through locus posts, and cut through steel with only a jigsaw.

Cutting through steel tubing with just a jigsaw!

Each post needed to be fully stripped of bark — so much work!

Six foot deep holes! Featuring a rock we had to pull out!

First post inserted!

Pulling after-hours shifts debarking!

Both posts debarked and placed in the holes!

Then, we drilled, painted, and assembled the array itself onto a wooden frame

Finally, it was time to mount the array to the posts!

One of twelve farm cats, surveying her land!

Lifting the whole frame up, with help from the community!

Thinking about next steps and mounting the linear actuators

Checking out how the hinges are holding up

As we built, we also designed the electrical system. We started by setting out requirements.

The final electrical block diagram.

Our goal is to optimize the solar power output by controlling the pan and tilt of the array.

Furthermore, the system must be reliable, safe, and easily maintainable, as it needs to be used and cared for by everyone who lives on the farm in the future.

We picked an Arduino as the main controller, and then used a 12V power supply and a 5V supply to power the actuators and Arduino, respectively.

Each linear actuator (one for pan, one for tilt) was controlled by the Arduino through a motor driver, enabling smooth control.

In order to sense the pan/tilt of the array, we originally tried to incorporate rotary encoders into the design, however changes in the hinge mechanism meant we couldn't easily mount any sort of encoder there.

Instead, we thought outside the box, and mounted an accelerometer directly on the solar panel array. This way, we could always detect the panel's orientation relative to Earth's gravity

Using the motor drivers and the accelerometer, we created a PID loop on the Arduino to be able to easily move the panels to a commanded orientation.

Next, we added a pyranometer, which is a sensor that detects the sun's strength ("irradiance") at a given angle. Using these readings, we were able to implement functionality to "scan" with the panels to find the point of highest irradiance, corresponding to the highest solar panel energy output.

As well, we added a clock IC, which would precisely tell us the current date and time. Using a lookup table for sun inclinations, we were able to come up with an initial guess for the optimal panel orientation, then use the pyranometer to fine-tune.

soldering the electronics together, with some help 😺

The electrical box, being tested inside

Electrical box in the field

The final setup, with wiring through waterproof conduit
Blood Sugar Feedback Lamp for Type 1 Diabetics
My partner has Type 1 Diabetes, and has to constantly monitor his blood sugar. I made a color-changing lamp that reflects his current blood sugar value, so that he doesn't have to be constantly checking on a phone app.

Blood Sugar Feedback Lamp for Type 1 Diabetics

My partner has Type 1 diabetes, which means that he's constantly looking at his blood sugar to make sure it's at normal levels, and not rapidly increasing/decreasing. Through our time together, I have personally seen the toll this can take on him. While I can't necessarily watch his blood sugar for him and give him a break, I decided I wanted to make something that could make the process of observing his blood sugar just a little bit easier.

Normally, his blood sugar is checked on a phone app — but this gets pretty exhausting to always have to context switch to pick up a phone. He tries to keep his blood sugar between 80 and 180 mg/dL — here, it's a little high since we're both sick right now!

As an artist and multidisciplinary engineer, I'm fascinated by the objects that communicate a message via light, sound, music, or movement. I wondered if there was a way to create a medium that could speak for itself, and catch attention, without requiring my partner to remember to check it. While I threw around the idea of automating a speaker to give out blood sugar readings in a robotic voice every 5 minutes, I ultimately decided that a light medium would be best, as it illuminates the room it exists in, and it doesn't majorly interrupt the observer from their thoughts or work.

The first prototype of the electronics, on a solderless breadboard to start.

The lamp consists of an ESP32, WS2812B led strips, logic-level converter, power supply, two buttons, a couple of resistors & capacitors, and a 3-D printed lamp structure (designed by me). I wrote code in C to pull blood sugar readings from a webserver that is populated every 5 minutes, and map blood sugar numerical range values to specific colors. One button turns the lamp on and off, and the other button cycles it through different LED patterns (blood sugar mode, rainbow, twinkle, static color).

Running through different LED patterns! You can see all the electronics in the enclosure.

The LEDs wrapped around the internal column! Makes a very even omnidirectional light source.

The lamp showing blood sugar over the last hour. New data is at the top, so here my partner's blood sugar started high (red), then dropped (orange) until it was in range (blue) and then optimal (green).
Olin College of Engineering Capstone - Designing and Building an OAE Device
For my engineering capstone, I worked with a team focused on creating a low-cost childhood hearing screening device for developing countries, especially in Latin America.

Olin College of Engineering Capstone - Designing and Building an OAE Device

For my senior engineering capstone, I worked with a team of Olin and Babson students to figure out how we can build an OAE device from scratch, and distribute it in Latin America.

OAEs allow for noninvasive hearing screening, only measuring ear characteristics — no user feedback needed, perfect for infants.

Infant hearing impairments are often overlooked, especially in underresourced organizations that can't afford the equipment to provide hearing screenings. This is a major problem because an estimated 60% of hearing loss is preventable and can be treated if it is caught soon enough. Those with undiagnosed hearing loss can be perceived as dumb and face discrimination because of their delayed language development. The cost of hearing screening (OAE) devices is large, going for as much as $4000 in the market, even without additional functionality necessary for practical use. This makes OAE devices inaccessible, especially in the area of our study, Latin America.

Our final product! A bit messy, but it worked!

As the only one on my team some amount of electrical engineering experience (not much!), I took the lead on figuring out how to successfully create an OAE device prototype. We were in a unique position because we could reference OAE documentation and tech development from expired patents to build the device. OAE-based hearing screening requires two speakers and a microphone. The two speakers each play a different pure tone (which we'll call f1 & f2), which causes our inner ear mechanism's hair cells to vibrate at a corresponding frequency found at (2*f1 - f2). This responding frequency is known as a "distortion product". I worked on amplifying our microphone's signal, running it through a bandpass filter to reduce surrounding noise, and obtaining FFTs to determine if our OAE probe was actually receiving a distortion product. I also created a PCB adapter to hold our amplification circuit and minimize the distance of tedious and fragile enamel wires. By the end of the capstone, we received our first distortion product. To welcome the next capstone team into the next phase of development, I built a test bench to hold the circuit.

A bandpass filter and amplifier used to isolate the distortion products.

The frequency response from a healthy ear. The peak towards the left is the ear's frequency response!

PCB of the microphone adapter

One of the professors testing the system!
Light Up Crocs
I made a pair of light up crocs using conductive thread and neopixels.

Light Up Crocs

When I first laid eyes on the Adafruit wearables line, I gasped. I couldn't believe I lived in the age where electronics could be physically sewn into clothes. The possibilities seemed endless. With my partner's birthday around the corner, I decided to take advantage of the opportunity to combine wearables technology with their love for Crocs. Thus - light up Crocs was born.

I remember starting the project and thinking this was going to be the easiest thing in the world. Crocs have holes where LEDs can go, LEDs sewn together with thread, and small pouch on the croc strap to hold microcontroller & battery. Unfortunately, it wasn't as straightforward as I would have liked. I couldn't rely on the conductive thread to supply enough current to the LEDs, and the digital signal was spotty and unreliable. I then switched to enamel wire, which was able to supply the needed current, but found that constant foot movement would apply too much strain on the wires, and they would break easily. Ultimately, I ended up using continuous-flex automation wire, which removed some of the seamlessness that conductive thread provided, but I attempted to make it as comfortable as possible by sandwhiching the circuit with extra fabric. Good thing Crocs are roomy!

The LED circuit consisted of an Adafruit Flora, neopixels, Adafruit BLE, and battery. These were easy to acquire all on the Adafruit page. I wrote code in C to create different color settings, and control LEDs via a phone app through a bluetooth module.
Off Grid Electrical System
At Woodland Harvest Mountain Farm, I integrated solar panels, hydroelectric, and conventional generators to provide enough electricity to sustain a house of 15 college students.

Off Grid Electrical System

When I decided to spend a semester on an off-grid farm, I really didn't know what to expect. Arriving to the Woodland Harvest Mountain Farm, I found a rudimentary electrical system — a 250W solar panel, a cheap battery charger, and a hydroelectric turbine in desperate need of some care. That was enough for the family who owned the farm, but we were about to have 15 engineering students living there! That's fifteen laptops and phones to keep charged, plus the background draw of the satellite internet.

First, we did some math to figure out how much power would actually be needed. A worst-case of everyone using their laptops for 12 hours/day, plus miscellaneous background draw (internet, lighting, etc), gave a requirement of about 6kWh of generation per day. The hydroelectric turbine put out a constant ~50W (1.2kWh/day), so we'd need to bridge the 4.8kWh/day gap with more solar panels. Given ten hours of usable light in the fall, we'd need panels that could generate about 480W continuous during the day. We gave ourselves some operating margin, and purchased a 1kW array of high-efficiency monocrystalline panels.

Next, we needed a way to connect the panels to the battery. This is typically done using a "charge controller," which monitors and manages battery charging. After some research, we found that largely two types of charge controllers existed — MPPT and PWM. The former was more expensive, but promised higher efficiency and more reliable power generation across temperature and light intensity. The latter was cheaper — and what was being used for the existing 250W panel. We decided to invest some money in a good MPPT controller, since it was agreed that reliable electricity access was important for everyone to complete the semester with minimal friction.

Diagram of our revamped electrical system!

Once the 1kW of panels and the new MPPT controller arrived, we got to work wiring everything up! One of our priorities was long-term maintainability and transparency for those who use the system after us, so we created a wiki page to document everything, and added stickers and QR codes to the different devices to allow for easy access to wiring diagrams, datasheets, and notes.

Our massive massive battery bank!

My good friend Leon, testing out the wiring.

Our trusty microhydro generator. Thanks for all the power!

We put documentation everywhere we could!

Microhydro power output during a rainstorm. Wow, 100W!

The solar array! Chickens just out of frame to the right!

Our massive Xantrax inverter. Thanks for all the AC!

A sunny winter's day. 500W power, batteries topped up, life is good!

Overall, our electricity system worked as well as any of us could've hoped, and did a great job keeping lights, laptops, and internet on over the semester.
Assistive Cleaning Device for Senior Citizen
We built a multi-cleaning tool with adjustable handles and interchangeable heads for a senior citizen experiencing different physical disabilities.

Assistive Cleaning Device for Senior Citizen

At Olin, there's a course called Engineering for Humanity, revolving around human-centered design for senior citizens. I, and my team (Shyheim Rus, Katie Thai-Tang, Mika Notermann), picked a community partner whose story resonated with us, and set out to build something for them that would make their life a little bit easier.

Our community partner was a wonderful individual with a love for art. Her main battles consisted of experiencing pains associated with osteoporosis and struggling with moderate tendonitis in her right hand. She had usually relied on her husband to handle most of the cleaning, cooking, and financial business, especially after her 30-year battle with cancer. With the recent passing of her husband, she had to adjust to being independent and taking care of many tasks on her own again.

Throughout the course, we frequently met with our community partner and shadowed them as they lived their lives. They identified their problems and challenges to us, and worked with us to help create something that would be truly valuable and useful to them. After much observation and collaboration, we decided we wanted to develop an easier method of cleaning and retrieving objects in her home, so that she can feel less stressed about potential injuries. As we came to this conclusion, we conducted multiple experiments and used design tools like Ela Ben-Ur's "Innovator's Compass" to better understand what shape and form the cleaning tool could have.

Our product to her was a multi-cleaner tool with adjustable handles and interchangeable heads. Throughout our four iterations, we modified the cleaning tools, 3-D printed new versions of the handles, and went through different material changes to make it as light as possible.
NASA-Funded Asteroid Discovery Research
I worked with Dr. Carrie Nugent to discover asteroids in historical data. I worked with Python to connect astronomical software with data processing and image modules.

NASA-Funded Asteroid Discovery Research

I worked under Dr. Carrie Nugent, improving their existing pipeline for discovering asteroids. Their research was centered around the NEAT dataset, an archive with thousands of images from different locations. With modern and sophisticated methods of image processing, we can discover thousands of new asteroids. My work consisted of obtaining images from the NEAT dataset, running them through image processing algorithms, and calibrating their parameters on space software for better asteroid/star recognition. The software we used was source extractor, scamp, and Aladin.

By fine tuning the algorithms, I was able to obtain images like the one above, where multiple stars and asteroids are circled. A main challenge I faced was running into distortion and noise in the image, that can be due to multiple reasons like location and weather.

One of my Python scripts divides images into quadrants, to make it easier for the image-processing to customize its parameters across the image. While it does not account for all distortion cases, it makes it easier for my successor to focus on star-removal algorithms and checking images with existing asteroid databases.

Some ramblings

01
- June 21, 2024
My journey building a blood sugar feedback lamp
My portfolio includes the technical description of the lamp, but I felt compelled to make a longer post about it because this project is actually really meaningful to me, and was such a great surprise for my partner.

I often wonder what the things are that go through people's minds when they hear of someone having Type 1 Diabetes. When I first met my partner, I only thought "Okay, he has to watch his blood sugar, and give himself sugar/insulin when he needs it." What I hadn't known or even seen, until we lived together, was the exhaustion and fatigue of basically always having to do the work of your pancreas. In general, our organs do so much for us. Manually executing the function of any one of them would make anyone burnout within a day or week.

People with Type 1 - they don't get a break. And with the broken healthcare system in the US, things are even more difficult. My partner is fortunate enough to come from a financially-stable White family, that took fast action when my partner was first diagnosed. I can only imagine what getting Type 1 looks like for a kid whose parents don't speak English and/or are immigrants. There is so much terminology like CGM, hyperglycemia, hypoglycemia, A1C, Bolus, Basal Rate, etc.. the list goes on, and it can get really confusing.

It's difficult to word this feeling, but I think my partner is lucky, for lack of a better word. Not just because he was born into a White family that helped him navigate having Type 1 early on, but also because he was born with a natural curiosity for anything engineered or built. This meant that when he was just a teenager, he was doing his research on the best insulin pumps, the latest diabetes technology, and research progress on making an artifical pancrease/closed-loop pump. After getting his hands on continuous glucose monitor (CGM), he went as far as to not settle for the default app provided, but found an open-source DIY interface called Nightscout (insert link) which enables his blood sugar data to be pasted on a website.

You might see where I'm going with this now. Once my partner's blood sugar readings were being published on a website, all that was left was to figure out what I could do with that data. I think most people appreciate just being to look up their child's blood sugar on the internet, but I was curious about ways I could manifest this information in the real world. Et viola - the blood sugar feedback lamp was born. This lamp helps my partner keep tabs on their blood sugar without having to stop what they're doing and pick up their phone. I think my portfolio article can continue the story from here. Anyways, I can visually see on the lamp that my partner's blood sugar is going down while he naps, so I gotta run. Thanks for reading!! <3
02
- June 05, 2024
What is Power?
Back in April, I was lucky enough to take Post Growth Institute's "Offers & Needs Market" facilitation training. After experiencing the magic of an OANM myself, I felt incredibly drawn to learn how to guide groups of people in the act of mutual aid, and facilitating meaningful connections

In one class, I learned about power! I’m fascinated with the concept of power. What does power mean? Why does title give power? How does power influence our interactions? How can we hold power responsibly?

For me, a first-generation Latina born into low socioeconomic status, power is incredibly tangible. I can feel its influence when I have a conversation with mentors, professors, senior engineers, and managers. I can also feel its influence when talking with those my age, who have different backgrounds and life experiences. And I can also feel it when I’m engaging with those who want to assert power (insist on a conversation topic, insist on a conversational dynamic).

A learning:

If we see power as a commodity, then we react to power from a scarcity mindset.

This^ statement was profound for me to learn. I believe that in life, we are often presented with the idea that “power” is something to strive to acquire more of, so we can have more agency and freedom. “If I make it to this point, then I can do A and I can say B”.

When in reality, power is just a dynamic. Power is relational. When talking with a mentor, the benefit of a power dynamic presents itself. It enables the person with “more power” to guide the person with “less power” in a journey of knowledge transfer.

However, this post is not intended to solidify power structures or promote specific power dynamics. Which leads me to my next learning.

“When we don’t believe we have personal power, we won’t show up in a way that contributes to collective power” - Dr. Amanda Aguilera

Our perception of power influences power dynamics. If we never recognize the value of our personal power, like the value of our lived experiences, thoughts, and opinions, then we cannot see how we can meaningfully contribute or help. When in reality, each of us has so much to offer! No matter what label or title we have. When I strengthen the value of personal power, I come into believing that my contributions and offerings as a participant is just as valuable as the facilitator guiding me. After all, there is no facilitator without participants, and no participants without a facilitator. And the facilitator also cannot grow, if the participant doesn’t express their feedback (personal power)

I have much more thoughts on this that I could share, but this post is getting too long. Feel free to connect if anything resonates!
03
- May 30, 2024
Getting trained as an Offers & Needs Market Facilitator
Back in April, I was trained as an "Offers & Needs Market" facilitator through the Post Growth Institute. I first heard of the Post Growth Institute through my friend Leon, who took the training and found it to be quite insightful. So, what is an Offers and Needs market? Imagine you have a group of people. Maybe the group of people live on the same street, or maybe they go to the same college, or maybe they're a random bunch from all over the world. It can be anyone. Why can it be anyone? Because everyone (regardless of what they might believe) possesses wealth, whether immaterial or material. Once you have your group, you can introduce the concept of an Offers & Needs market, and facilitate rounds of sharing offers, and needs. Examples below depict just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what can be offered, and requested.

When I experienced my first OANM, I was in awe of everything - from the smooth flow of events to the calm demeanor of the faciliators to the magnitude of the offers people were offering and the immense support for those requested needs. Everything. I was excited to be able to facilitate this process myself. Initially, I thought it would be a breeze. Just tell people what an OANM is, set a timer to have people give offers, set a timer to have people give needs, and close! But there is so much more to it. Here are just few of the questions a facilitator should answer before facilitating:

Is the OANM in-person, virtual, or hybrid? What preparation would each require? Will you facilitate alone or with someone else?

Does anyone need any accommodation of the sort, like captions? What languages will be spoken?

Where will offers/needs/contact be stored? Google sheet? Other platform?

What questions might arise? What materials will you provide? How will you solicit feedback at the end, if any?

How will ensure time is respected? How will you ensure questions don't take things off-schedule?

In addition to learning how to facilitate, and being provided the necessary materials to facilitate, I also got to learn about how various design concepts like strengths-based sequencing, progressive integration, silent reflection, multimodality, circular conviviality, etc.. to name a few (there are much more!), can be applied to an OANM. I felt grateful to learn of these tools, not just for OANM facilitation, but also because they're genuinely useful tools to know of in any social setting.

Overall taking this training was such a great decision, and I'd highly recommend it to anyone wondering how to work towards building community and a post-growth future. I feel that it is such a radical way to engage with others - not just because it is an intentional space to give/receive, but because it goes against the groove of the societal norms of how we should treat each other. Scarcity mindsets produced by capitalism tell people to not trust their neighbors, to demand payment for everything, and to figure out ways to take advantage of each other to get ahead. The OANM proves that the exact opposite is possible, when we realize the abundance and wealth we all possess.
04
- December 20, 2023
Working as a software sustaining engineer out of college
It's March 2022, I'm in the middle of my last semester at Olin, and I'm applying to jobs nearly every moment I'm not doing school work or being a human. Things are hectic, but they're also exciting. This will be the first time I can start building some actual wealth, as a first-generation Latina who does not have any generational wealth whatsoever. This will also be the first time I'm getting paid to put my robotics and engineering knowledge into practice, so I'm excited that difficult semesters are finally going to pay off, and I'm hopeful I'll also enjoy what I work on - but the enjoyment isn't essential. I have a mission to land a job in a difficult job market. At this point, I've applied to nearly....25 places? and have interviewed for a few with no luck. Turns out companies don't want a robotics student that knows only a little bit of everything (and that makes sense LOL).

I end up at my school's career fair, and become acquainted with a robotics piece-picking automation company known as RightHand Robotics, where an existing group of Olin alumni exist. I hear good things from them and decide to apply to a software engineering role. I will admit, I was not incredibly excited at the thought of working in the warehouse automation space. Maybe that is one of the things you don't say out loud, but the thought of gray warehouses and picking plastic-wrapped items was not appealing. To some extent, it still isn't. But I find robotics to be such an awesome space. Humans work towards getting machines to do only 30% of what a human can, and when things get difficult, there is an admiration of how well the human body is designed. I love that part.

After interviewing for the role, RightHand tells me that they think I'm not the best fit for that particular role, and they instead suggest an alternative software role known as a "sustaining software engineer". I look at the job description, and it's a couple of bullet points at most conveying that a sustaining engineer should triage robot bugs, root cause them, and implement a fix or suggest a fix to other software teams. They mention that a "jack-of-all-trades" kind of person would be a good fit for the role. And as robotics student that knows a little bit of everything, that sounds like me! So I go for it.

To my relief, I actually enjoy the role despite enjoyment not being a requisite! Each bug is a mystery, some more elaborate than others, and I gain software development experience at a comfortable pace, through scripting and feature development. As the new-grad, I also receive tons of guidance and support when things get especially tricky, and I feel really grateful for that. Within 1.5 year in this role, I accomplish a lot - like giving presentations to our Support team, finding major bugs, contributing to sprint teams software development, and getting promoted to Software Engineer 2. Ultimately, while the warehouse automation space is not my cup of tea, I really enjoyed this role and hope to work in a similar multidisciplinary role in the future.