Allison has a passion for solving practical problems with robotics. Building on her experience in the self-driving car industry and her background in robotics research, she is leading a team to solve some of the toughest problems in agtonomy at Blue River Technology.
Allison has experience in a wide range of robotics and applications. In the AV industry, she was a Senior Staff Manager at Waymo, leading several teams working on vehicle behavior. She drove the cross functional working group to improve behavior around pedestrians and other vulnerable road users to drive autonomously in San Francisco.
Allison previously held the position of Engineering Lead and Manager of the Shared Autonomy Robotics team at Toyota Research Institute. Her team focused on developing advanced robotic teleoperation technologies that enable robots and people to seamlessly and safely work together. She has also worked as the Lead Manipulation Researcher/Project Manager at Toyota Partner Robotic Group where she investigated robust task and motion planning manipulation strategies in unstructured environments.
Before joining Toyota, she was the Lead Engineer for Robotic Perception on Robonaut 2, the first humanoid robot on the International Space Station. She was responsible for software development and applied vision research to facilitate cooperation between robots and people.
Allison has degrees in Electrical and Mechanical Engineering. Her thesis focused on collision avoidance during supervised robotic manipulation.
