Changing the World with Robotics – Employee Interview: Robotics Engineer Edition

Meet Denys, Lead Robotics System Engineer who moved from Ukraine to Tokyo in 2012 as one of Mujin's very first engineers, tackling 'impossible' automation on the frontlines.

Welcome to another edition of our “Mujinians Voice” series! Today, we interview Denys, Lead Robotics System Engineer. Having arrived in Japan from Ukraine in 2012 to help build Mujin almost from scratch, Denys reflects on our founding years, the grueling physical reality of industrial robotics, and where automation is heading next.

🧒 Childhood Spark & Questioning “Blind Machines”

– Can you tell us a bit about your upbringing and how you got into engineering?

💬 Denys: I was born in Ukraine, and both of my parents were engineers. Early in my childhood, my parents gave me an introductory programming book, and on its cover was an illustration of robot programming. That image captured my imagination completely. Looking back, that was the very spark that shaped my entire journey.

During my university studies in Ukraine, I built small robots, soldered boards, and wrote embedded control software. That experience highlighted a glaring flaw in industrial automation: factory robots were astronomical in cost, yet they were essentially blind, deaf machines blindly replaying pre-taught trajectory points. If an object was off by just one millimeter, the machine would crash or halt.

I became determined to build intelligent robots that perceive their surroundings, compute dynamic trajectories in milliseconds, and adapt to unpredictable real-world environments.

⚡ Discovering OpenRAVE & Moving to Tokyo in 2012

– How did you first cross paths with Mujin?

While contributing to the Robot Operating System (ROS) open-source ecosystem, I came across the autonomous motion planning library OpenRAVE, created by Dr. Rosen Diankov (then at the University of Tokyo, originally from Carnegie Mellon). Rosen’s algorithmic architecture was years ahead of anything else in academia or industry.

When I learned that Rosen had co-founded Mujin with CEO Issei Takino in Tokyo, I reached out immediately. The vision of porting cutting-edge real-time motion planning algorithms onto real heavy-duty industrial arms was irresistible. In 2012, I packed my bags, moved to Japan, and joined Mujin as one of its first engineers.

🏭 Conquering the “Impossible” in Real Industrial Trenches

– What was it like deploying systems in the early days?

💬 Denys: In 2012, we had to invent almost everything from scratch: the core robot controller, real-time bus communications, kinematics solvers, 3D perception pipelines, and touch operator UIs. We traveled directly to customer factories all over Japan, debugging arms in environments thick with oil, metal shavings, and dust.

At the time, customers routinely told us: “Random bin-picking is physically impossible—parts are overlapping in random orientations, and machines can never handle that variance.”

We refused to accept that. We coupled fast 3D vision with real-time obstacle avoidance and dynamic grasp synthesis. When our system first picked randomly jumbled heavy steel parts smoothly without a single collision on the live production floor, the plant managers and line workers erupted in spontaneous cheers. That goosebump moment is something I will never forget.

💡 Engineering Ethos: Taming the Physical World

– What mindset do you look for in prospective engineers? What is your vision for robotics?

For engineers with deep foundations in computer science and mathematics who crave the thrill of seeing real steel move through their code, Mujin is the ultimate playground.

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