Safe electronics and embedded software, from concept to production.
I’m Milton Santos, an electronics engineer trained at ITA with more than 21 years of R&D across automotive, aerospace, industrial, consumer electronics and agritech. I help teams design, certify and industrialize safety-critical products.
- TÜV Rheinland Certified Functional Safety Engineer
- Vector Certified Embedded Professional
- IEEE Senior Member
- Porto, Portugal
Services
One-off support or ongoing engagement, in English or Portuguese.
Functional safety
Safety concepts, risk analysis and aligning development with the applicable standards.
Motor drive electronics
Hardware and firmware for brushless motors, electric and electro-hydraulic power steering, servo systems and industrial actuators.
System and embedded software architecture
System and software architecture, from small teams to programs of 120 engineers.
R&D process and quality
IATF 16949 and ASPICE readiness, risk-proportionate documentation and failure-mode analysis.
R&D strategy and organization
Roadmaps, team planning, portfolio and product lifecycle management.
Technical pre-sales
RFQ estimates, offer definition and bid responses your team can execute.
Industry experience
More than 20 years of R&D at drive manufacturers, automotive suppliers, consumer electronics and engineering consultancy. End customers are described by sector.
Engineering Manager, Global Electronics Team Europe
- Lead an R&D organization of about 18 people (hardware, firmware, software and mechanical simulation) for electric and electro-hydraulic power steering, electric industrial clamps and servo systems.
- Cut the development cycle by 40% while keeping IATF 16949 and ISO 26262 compliance.
- Defined a new functional safety concept for electro-hydraulic steering.
- Reduced development cost by 20% through team reorganization.
- Led R&D readiness for IATF 16949 certification.
Head of Pre-Sales, Embedded & Safety-Critical Systems
- Owned the discipline’s strategy, offer portfolio and roadmap.
- Built 3 new offers and led 30+ proposals with a win rate of about 20%.
Advanced Expert and Senior Architect
- Technical manager and software architect of a digital instrument cluster for a premium carmaker, on a program of up to 120 engineers, co-located in Munich.
- System and software architect for 4D imaging radar, ADAS and e-cockpit.
- Founding member of the Safety-Critical Working Group and mentor to consultants in embedded systems and AI.
Research Scientist
- Machine-learning research: human activity recognition (89% accuracy) and automatic sensitive-media detection in video (92%).
- Co-inventor on Brazilian and US patent applications.
R&D Manager
- Built and led a 13-person notebook motherboard team and a 6-person rapid prototyping team.
- Created Samsung Brazil’s innovation pipeline and set up the motherboard and rapid prototyping labs.
R&D Supervisor and Technical Leader
- Created a single automated tester for all Body & Security products, cutting test effort by 70%.
- Improved concept-phase bill-of-materials accuracy by 20% and built an automatic quotation tool.
- Coordinated FMEA and DRBFM for new vehicles with a carmaker.
Development Engineer
- Hardware design of Body & Safety modules for four carmakers.
- Created an end-of-line test specification simulation method adopted as the standard in Brazil.
- Best Engineer Award, Comfort Module project (2010).
R&D Engineer
- Launched the FWL211 fiber-optic telephone system (electronics board, firmware and VHDL).
- Cut an optical analyzer’s processing time by 50% with digital signal processing techniques.
Intern, Flight Test Instrumentation
- Implemented an IEEE 1451.2 sensor network to reduce cable-harness weight on flight-test aircraft.
Entrepreneurship
I founded an embedded computer-vision startup for agriculture.
Founder and CEO
- Led concept, architecture and development of an embedded machine-learning framework for Qualcomm, Intel and NVIDIA platforms.
- Over 95% accuracy with a hybrid computer-vision pipeline and 97% in deep-learning plant segmentation.
- The ARM smart camera for people and vehicle detection won two smart-city startup challenges.
- From 2019, stayed on the board as associate director.
Consulting work
Independent projects for industrial clients, research institutes and technical publishers.
Senior Consultant
- Parallelized lithium battery charger for large-scale charging: +70% performance and +30% temperature class, with on-site installation support.
- Deep-learning optimization: accuracy from 72% to 93%.
- Firmware analysis for a digital electrocardiogram product.
Technical reviewer
- Review of the book Electrical Product Compliance and Safety Engineering, Volume 2 (294 pages).
Consultant
- Modular, incremental, low-cost avionics architecture for the Sonda-L liquid-propulsion training rocket.
Consultant
- Low-cost automatic teleprompter system: three mechanical and two electronic prototypes, with the final solution documented.
Academic work
Research in robotics, machine learning and optical communications.
Master’s thesis
- Analysis and proposal of hardware architectures for autonomous vehicles (original title in Portuguese). Advisor: Prof. Dr. José Raimundo de Oliveira.
PhD thesis (on hold)
- Usage of swarm of aerial robots for obtaining superresolution map on agriculture. Advisor: Prof. Dr. Eric Rohmer.
Patents
- BR 10 2017 026251 0, INPI (2017): method and system for sensor data recognition using data enrichment for the learning process.
- US 16/033,847, USPTO (2018): Method and system for sensor data recognition using data enrichment for the learning process.
Publications
- Penatti, O. A. B.; Santos, M. F. S. Human activity recognition from mobile inertial sensors using recurrence plots. arXiv:1712.01429, 2017.
- Evaluating PMD of Installed Fiber Plants: Status of the Problem for 10 Gb/s, 40 Gb/s and Beyond. Journal of Lightwave Technology, 2006 (co-author).
- PMD Characterization of Installed Fiber Networks. NFOEC 2006, Anaheim (co-author).
- Three papers at ENCITA (ITA), 2003 and 2004, on automating plasma characterization and temperature control systems.
Teaching and talks
Teaching electronics and robotics, and talks on drones, agricultural robotics and safety-critical systems.
Classroom Mentor and Project Reviewer
- Supported students in the Robotics Software Engineering program.
Professor of Electrical Engineering
- Basic Electronics and General Electronics II courses.
Talks
- Robotics in the field: evolution and challenges, Piracicaba (2019).
- Technological trends of drones for precision agriculture, Brazilian Remote Sensing Symposium (2019).
- Complex Electronics and Embedded Software in Safety-Critical Systems, São José dos Campos (2018).
- The engineering behind drones, Embarcados webinar (2017).
- Panel on university, industry and mobility technology, SAE Brasil (2004).
Education and certifications
Education in electronics engineering, robotics and management, with certifications in functional safety and embedded systems.
B.Sc. Electronics Engineering
M.Sc. Electrical Engineering
MBA, Business Management
PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Robotics
Certifications
- Certified Functional Safety Engineer, TÜV Rheinland.
- Vector Certified Embedded Professional.
- AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner.
Continuing education (selection)
- Automotive System Design According to ISO 26262, TÜV Rheinland (2021).
- Classic AUTOSAR, Elektrobit (2020).
- Avionics Software DO-178C and Avionics Hardware DO-254 (2018).
- EMPRETEC, SEBRAE (2017).
- UPenn Robotics Specialization, Coursera (2016).
- HyperLynx SI/PI, Mentor Graphics (2012).
- Automotive Team Training, Continental, Regensburg (2011).
Languages
- Portuguese (native), English (fluent), Spanish, German and Korean (basic).
Awards and affiliations
Recognition and professional memberships.
Awards and grants
- Altran Champions (2020 and 2021).
- Best Engineer Award, Comfort Module project, Continental (2010).
- FAPESP PIPE: researcher (2005 – 2006) and research coordinator (2019 – 2020).
- CNPq PIBIC undergraduate research grants (2001 and 2002).
- Brazilian Physics Olympiad 1999: honorable mention (9th place).
Professional affiliations
- IEEE Senior Member (2022), Robotics and Automation Society; member since 2008.
- Brazilian Society of Automation (SBA), since 2009.
- CREA, since 2004.
Let’s talk about your project
Tell me what you’re building and where you need support. I reply in English or Portuguese.
milton@miltonfssantos.org