Hi, I'm Tyler Flar.
I'm a CS master's student at UC San Diego working on autonomous systems. At the Advanced Robotics and Controls Lab I'm building navigation for a robotic endoscope, and with AquaMesh and Scripps I'm getting an ocean sensor ready for research. Before that I led drone wildlife-tracking projects at Engineers for Exploration and worked on a human-following Spot robot that became an AIM 2026 paper. I've also done product and systems work at Brightree, Leidos and Cubic.
Research
Autonomous systems: perception, navigation, simulation and field testing
Project Member
AquaMesh
La Jolla, CA · Hybrid
- Helping AquaMesh and the Scripps COOL Lab get AquaSpectra, an in-water optical water-quality sensor, ready for research use by working on its software, calibration and tuning.
Projects:AquaSpectra
Lab Member
UC San Diego Advanced Robotics and Controls Lab
La Jolla, CA · Hybrid
- Working on autonomous navigation for a robotic endoscope inside the kidney, using a graph of the kidney from the pre-op CT and depth from the camera to decide where to go next.
Projects:Endoscopic Navigation
Project Lead
Engineers for Exploration
La Jolla, CA · Hybrid
- Led two wildlife-tracking projects, mentored student teams building low-cost animal-monitoring systems (5–15 students at a time, 20+ in all) and presented the work at campus poster sessions and symposiums.
Projects:Radio Telemetry Tracker · Baboons on the Move
Publications
CHASER: Robust Human Following on a Legged Robot Using Vision and Bluetooth
2026 IEEE/ASME International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics (AIM) · Genova, Italy
Contribution: the Bluetooth angle-of-arrival module, which turns BLE readings from a Silicon Labs antenna array into a heading back to the operator when the camera loses them.
Links:Paper · Project write-up
Honors & awards
NSF Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU)
National Science Foundation
Funded a summer of research at Engineers for Exploration.
Selected projects
Sep 2026 – Present
AquaSpectra
Getting AquaMesh's in-water optical sensor ready for research use with the Scripps COOL Lab: its software, calibration and tuning.
Sep 2025 – Present
Endoscopic Navigation
Getting a robotic endoscope to find its own way through the kidney, using a map of the kidney from the patient's CT scan.
Apr 2026 – Jun 2026
Active Perception for Geolocation
An AI agent that plays GeoGuessr by choosing where to look next in live Street View.
Aug 2024 – Oct 2025
Radio Telemetry Tracker
Finding radio-tagged wildlife from a drone instead of on foot, for the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance.
Apr 2025 – Jun 2025
FollowMe Robot
Bluetooth direction finding so a Boston Dynamics Spot can keep following a person after its camera loses them.
Industry experience
Technical Product Manager Intern
Brightree
San Diego, CA · Hybrid
- Built the docs-as-code pipeline for Brightree's 27 customer-facing API guides, then analyzed 553M production API requests for a usage report and a SOAP deprecation plan.
Chief Engineer Intern
Leidos
Remote
- Led a monitoring overhaul for a DOJ program, from tool evaluation and a white paper to probes and ServiceNow alerts, saving $120K a year and lifting critical portal uptime to 99.9%.
Systems Engineering Intern
Cubic Transportation Systems
San Diego, CA · Hybrid
- Built a Python and DXL tool that joins DOORS requirements with TestRail results in a live traceability matrix, cutting about a month of manual checking to 30 minutes.
Teaching
Tutor and Teaching Assistant
UC San Diego, CSE Department
La Jolla, CA · Hybrid
- Teaching assistant for CSE 142L, Software Project for Computer Architecture (Summer 2025).
- Tutor for CSE 101, Design and Analysis of Algorithms (Spring and Fall 2024), CSE 105, Theory of Computation (Summer 2024), and CSE 21, Mathematics for Algorithms and Systems Analysis (Winter 2025).
Education
Master's degree, Computer Science
UC San Diego
Relevant coursework: CSE 252D Advanced Computer Vision · CSE 250A Probabilistic Reasoning and Learning · CSE 237D Embedded Systems Design Project · CSE 260 Parallel Computation · CSE 237C Validation and Testing of Embedded Systems (in progress)
Bachelor's degree, Computer Science
UC San Diego
GPA: 3.8
Volunteering
Founding President
Triton Tails
- Founded a student org, got it university-recognized and grew it to 400+ members in its first year.
Outside of work
- Pickleball
- Cooking
- Gym
- Climbing
- Reading
- Drawing
- 3D modeling
- Video games