RAI Institute
Technical Lead · Current
Technical leadership for complex robotic systems across mechanical, electrical, controls, software, and research interfaces.
Experience
About Oscar Frias
I'm a Mexico City-born and raised mechanical engineer with a creative mind, a passion for machines, and a strong bias toward understanding the people who use them. I like designing clever mechanical solutions to difficult problems, building them, and finding out where reality disagrees with the design.
I currently work at the RAI Institute, where I provide technical leadership for complex robotic systems. I work with mechanical, electrical, controls, software, and research teams to turn new ideas into machines we can build and test. I still enjoy getting into the details; leadership, to me, is part of the engineering rather than something separate from it.
Before RAI, I worked at Formlabs, where I designed and built SLS 3D printers and their accessories. I was the technical champion for Fuse 1+ and Fuse Blast, leading teams of more than 70 engineers from many disciplines. The job took me from solving stubborn mechanical problems myself to helping a large group of people solve them together.
Going further back, I was Principal Engineer at Pensa, where I led engineering for client projects and the DIWire family of products. At Unilife, I developed reconstitution syringes and mechanical autoinjectors, ran human-factors studies, and even built my own force sensors. Before that I helped build a big robot for the Moon, founded a product company in Mexico City, designed components for Chrysler cars, created the maintenance department for an adventure park in Baja, and rotated through a major brewery to help make sure the beer kept flowing.
What I know
I got my BS in Mechanical Engineering at a school that really valued and promoted hands-on experience as a learning tool, which enabled me to get involved with a couple of professors that really propelled me in my understanding of materials, machines and manufacturing processes.
Thanks to these friendships and my innate curiosity, I graduated in 2006 with more than 1000 hours of shop and lab time under my belt. The skills and knowledge I developed and gathered during all those hours have served me well in several professional opportunities and have turned me into an avid maker.
I learned to think seriously about users when I designed my first backpack, and learned several ways to understand them while getting my master’s degree. That practice still shapes my engineering. The operators, technicians, assemblers, and maintainers are part of every machine I design.
At work
I value hard work, teamwork and commitment over many other things. I am way more prolific when I work on projects I believe on, and with people with whom I share my beliefs. I don’t mind putting long hours for a project as long as we’re all on it together. And I thrive in diverse and agile environments in which ideas can be bounced and where the information flow is free of red tapes.
I'm good at prioritizing when I have a clear (and realistic) deadline. I can juggle many projects at the same time, and the thrill of an upcoming deadline gets me going.
With my teams, I try to make ownership clear, bring risks into the open early, and give people enough context to make good decisions. I enjoy calm and well-organized projects, but I’m also comfortable when the path is uncertain and we have to learn our way forward by analyzing, building, and testing.
Outside work
I love to tinker and experiment with physical things by strapping them to an Arduino or Raspberry Pi. Thanks to my professor Nick Durrant I learned to appreciate the beauty of the physicality of things and that things can be augmented by digital information and vice-versa. So, half of my apartment is filled with bits and pieces of ongoing projects, including a weighted backpack for long hiking training, a portable energy generator, an automated guinea pig feeder, and a smart coffeemaker.
I recently got into amateur radio, and I've been having a blast. It combines tinkering with the chance to dive deep into a complex technical subject, and now I'm building my own antennas to connect with people over the air.
I love baking bread and cooking my Mexican food, and if you're around me for long enough you'll get to try them both. I don't follow sports, but I do love to hike, Parkour and martial arts. I love to be in the outdoors, and I need to be in motion.
I love reading cyberpunk and space novels. I got hooked when I read my first Asimov book and I found it visionary. I enjoy stories that are accurate and fantastic at the same time, and I love to see when some of those far-out ideas inspire science and engineering in the real world.
What interests me
I realize that the future I imagine is only going to happen if I get my hands into it. I want to help create the robots, machines, vehicles, tools, and gear that let us explore, build, and do things we could not do before. I’m especially interested in the messy transition from a compelling idea to hardware that works reliably outside the lab.
Experience
Formlabs
Mechanical engineering & technical leadership
Designed and built SLS 3D printers and accessories; technical champion for Fuse 1+ and Fuse Blast.
Pensa
Principal Engineer
Led engineering for client product-development programs and the DIWire family of products.
Earlier work
Medical devices, robotics & manufacturing
Unilife, Astrobotic, HighGround, automotive components, industrial operations, and hands-on maintenance engineering.
Technical scope
- Machine and mechanism architecture
- Robotics hardware and electromechanical integration
- Structures, materials, actuators, and sensors
- Prototyping, test strategy, and system validation
- Reliability, failure analysis, and risk reduction
- Design for manufacturing, assembly, and service
- Cross-disciplinary technical leadership
- Requirements, interfaces, and engineering decisions
Get in touch
Please don't hesitate to send me a note if you'd like to learn more about me or my projects. I'm always happy to talk.