Research
Welcome to my Website
Ross Brancati, PhD
Human Systems Integration Engineer and research scientist in the Warfighter Lab at Galvion
More about the Warfighter Lab:
About Me
Hobbies
In my free time I enjoy hanging out with my dog and spending time outdoors.
Recent Highlights
Reinforcement Learning for Stable Gait and Navigation with Quadruped Model
I used Unity to build a quadruped model and trained it with reinforcement learning to walk with fast and stable gait. I also trained it to perform target navigation. It uses a central pattern generator with modulation of joint angles via a recurrent neural network.
Sliding Puzzle Game
I built a simple 2D sliding puzzle game in Unity and deployed it to a web application. The goal is to connect the two black dots by sliding tiles adjacent to the empty slot.
Going the extra mile: deployng your ML model
Model deployment isn't in your day-to-day job description? I wrote a guide to a bare bones approach to getting your first model deployed (for free) with FastAPI, Docker, and Render.
Dissertation Defense
I successfully defended my dissertation in January 2025. My project explored identifying and classifying patient specific injury mechanisms and factors related to development of patellofemoral pain using unsupervised and supervised machine learning models.
Leave One Subject Out Cross Validation for Machine Learning Models
Cross validating machine learning models by leaving out all observations from a single subject. A great approach for small sample sizes and multiple observations per sample. This post explains the approach and how to implement it from scratch in python.
Gait Speed Classification using Inertial Measurement Units and Deep Learning
Wearable technology such as inertial measurement units are useful for measuring movement. In this project, I used an open source dataset with signals derived from inertial measurement units to classify walking gait speed with a deep learning model.
Principal Component Analysis on Time Series Data
An application of machine learning methodologies including dimensionality reduction and classification models to analyze the complex behavior of musculoskeletal injuries with a "systems theory" approach.
March 2023