trig

Trygve Utstumo, PhD

trig·ve

From Norse, hard to pronounce, Trig for short

ut·stu·mo

A farm in Dalsbygda (not Japanese)

Trygve smiling outdoors in round sunglasses, holding a coffee cup

Engineer and engineering leader in AI, robotics and industrial data. Ph.D. in engineering cybernetics. Former Googler. Based in Oslo.

About

I've worked across embedded software, augmented reality and field robotics, and more recently led a 50-person engineering organisation building generative AI for industrial data. At Google I helped take ARCore from launch to 100 million Android devices. My Ph.D. work on precision weed control became the Kilter robot, which Kubota now distributes in Europe.

Today I'm a Principal Staff Engineer at Cognite, working on Custom Flows.

Work

  1. Cognite logo

    2019 – present · 7 years

    Cognite

    Seven years and counting. I started out leading our robotics work, went on to run a 50-person engineering organisation as lead engineering manager, and am now a Principal Staff Engineer building Custom Flows.

  2. A digital caliper measuring a machined aluminium part on a test rig

    2017 – 2019

    Google ARCore / Daydream

    I worked with Qualcomm, Samsung, Sony and the Pixel team to get phones ready for augmented reality: calibrating them, keeping the IMU and camera clocks in sync, chasing down thermal issues and collecting data for Pixel face unlock.

  3. The Kilter weeding robot straddling rows of carrots in a field

    2011 – 2018

    Adigo / Kilter

    As an industrial PhD candidate I worked on the robot that became Kilter: classifying weed leaves, navigating the rows, and the droplet and nozzle control we later patented. Along the way I helped grow the team, hiring five people.

Education

  1. The big blue NTNU letters on the lawn outside the main building in Trondheim Two students building an aluminium-frame field robot in a lab A custom IMU board mounted next to a MicroStrain reference unit

    2005 – 2018

    PhD and MSc, engineering cybernetics · NTNU

    Both my degrees are in engineering cybernetics. My industrial PhD was about finding weeds in row crops and treating each one with a single drop of herbicide. I also supervised six master’s students and co-supervised PhD candidate Johan Hatleskog.

    Patents and papers on Google Scholar

  2. The MARS Lab banner above the lab’s motion-capture room, with cameras along the walls and checkerboard calibration targets on the floor

    2015

    Visiting researcher · University of Minnesota, MARS Lab

    A research stay in Minneapolis with Prof. Stergios Roumeliotis, working on visual-inertial navigation: getting a camera and an IMU to agree on where they are, which starts with calibrating them and keeping their clocks in sync.

  3. The miniature pan-tilt camera head in machined aluminium, driven by a thin tungsten cable over a pulley

    2010

    Erasmus exchange · EPFL, Lab de microtechnique

    As an exchange student I designed and built a pan-tilt stereo camera small enough to enter the body through an 8 mm laparoscopic port, steered by outside servos through a 0.45 mm tungsten cable. The project later spun out as Distalmotion.

    With Prof. Hannes Bleuler, Dr. Ricardo Beira and Dr. Laura Santos.