About Me

I like to figure out how to build new kinds of things. I especially like working on problems that require a wide range of different skills. I'm currently working on building humanoid robots, which involves pieces from just about every field of technology I can think of, from mechanical engineering and electronic design through real-time, machine vision, and AI planning software.

As a grad student at Harvard (1993-1998) I worked on a variety of schemes to improve the performance of computers or networks:

  • Congestion control algorithms for high-speed networks, to get fair and efficient allocation of network resources among millions of users.
  • Compiler optimizations to maximize performance of microprocessor caches, both for general-purpose code and network protocol stacks.
  • Using fancy techniques like runtime code generation to support high-speed protocol processing.
  • Injecting randomization into systems to facilitate better performance measurements.
In the end I concluded that the most that any of the above things could do was improve the speed of something by a factor of two or so, and basically lost interest. But you can read the papers if you like.

From 1995 through 2001 I worked on e-commerce software. In 1996, our startup Viaweb released the first do-it-yourself e-commerce software, allowing small companies to sell products online just like big ones. In fact, a lot of big companies used our software too instead of having something custom built. In 1998 we got bought by Yahoo, and our product became Yahoo Store and parts of Yahoo Shopping.

From mid 2001 on, I've been working on robotics. Specifically, on teleoperated humanoid robots for use in domestic service, reconnaissance, and industrial remote maintenance. See more at Anybots.

As well as working on the long-term project, once in a while I need to satisfy my urge to hack something up quickly and see it work. Such side projects include a balancing scooter, improving my keyboard, and adding an ultra-realistic Apple ][ mode to xscreensaver.

I put this on talk announcements:

Dr. Blackwell is the founder and CTO of Anybots Inc, a Mountain View startup building humanoid robots for industrial and domestic use.

Previously he was a founder of Viaweb, a startup that created the first end-user Internet storefront system. The product became Yahoo Store when the company was acquired by Yahoo in 1998. Tens of thousands of merchants use the system to sell through the internet.

He received a Ph.D. in 1998 from Harvard University, where he worked on randomized network protocols, randomized compiler optimizations, and other random things. He has published in the proceedings of ACM SIGCOMM, IEEE Infocom, and Usenix.

Copyright 2001-2005, Trevor Blackwell. Home