Hoon Ki Kim
Senior Mechanical Engineer @Zordi
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WORK HISTORY
Senior Mechanical Engineer @Zordi
Boston, MA, US
First mechanical engineerPhase 1: Strawberry Harvesting Automation• Led all hardware development for autonomous greenhouse robotics.• Designed an autonomous strawberry harvesting system, including: • Novel strawberry harvesting gripper (patented) • Rail‑based mobile robot platform • Automated material‑handling system • Developed vision‑enabling hardware (cameras, lighting, sensors) to support machine‑learning pipelines.• Collaborated with ML and software engineers by designing hardware optimized for perception, data collection, and learning‑based control.• Delivered a fully functional robotic platform that directly contributed to successful Series A fundraising.Phase 2: High‑Performance Harvesting & Manipulation• Architected a second‑generation strawberry harvesting gripper featuring: • Extremely compact geometry suitable for dense, clustered plant environments. • Integrated cutting mechanism enabling reliable single‑motion harvesting.• Dramatically improved harvesting reliability and overall system performancePhase 3: General‑Purpose Robotics & Physical AI (2025–Present)• Designed and prototyped multiple robotic grippers, including: • Task‑specific grippers optimized for individual manipulation primitives. • A lightweight parallel gripper with swappable fingers • Fin‑Ray–style compliant fingers for robust general‑purpose picking• Developed a human‑scale bi‑manual mobile robot for manual labor tasks in warehouse‑like environments.• Built leader–follower (teleoperation) hardware systems, including: • Hand‑held leader devices used by human operators to demonstrate tasks. • Hardware enabling high‑quality data capture for imitation learning. • Real‑world deployment in greenhouse environments for data collection.• Owned the physical interface between physical AI learning algorithms and real‑world robotics, ensuring hardware reliability, repeatability, and data quality.
EDUCATION
Carnegie Mellon University's College of Engineering
Master’s Degree, Mechanical Engineering
Carnegie Mellon University's College of Engineering
Bachelor’s Degree, Mechanical Engineering
ABOUT HOON KI KIM
Senior Robotics / Mechanical Engineer with 8+ years of experience designing end‑to‑end robotic hardware systems for physical AI applications. Specialized in robotic grippers, manipulation, and learning‑enabled hardware for physical AI, reinforcement learning, and imitation learning systems. Proven ability to operate as a sole mechanical engineer, owning hardware development from early research prototypes through field‑deployed robotic platforms across multiple company phases and pivots.
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