Joseph Bondaryk joins Toggle Robotics as CTO
June 1, 2022 • BOHEMIA, NY — Joseph Bondaryk has joined Toggle Robotics, the company that has brought industrial robotics and manufacturing automation to rebar, as Chief Technology Officer (CTO), reporting to CEO and Co-founder Daniel Blank. In this role, Joe will be responsible for integrating perception and AI capabilities into Toggle’s robotics platform across software, hardware and the different markets that the company serves.
“Over my 25+ year career, I have worked on a lot of advanced robotics projects: underwater, ground, wheeled and legged as well as aircraft. This is the first time I have worked on an application that has such a clear and focussed value proposition. Toggle Robotics will do for reinforced concrete-based construction what robotic assembly and welding did for the automotive industry. From parking garages to ever-taller skyscrapers, from traditional bridges, tunnels and railbeds to the foundations of giant wind turbines and high tech gigawatt battery installations, Toggle’s potential to profoundly impact the way we construct the basic infrastructure of our modern society is essentially limitless,” said Joseph Bondaryk, Chief Technology Officer of Toggle Robotics. “I am incredibly impressed with what the passion of this small team has accomplished already and am eager to help shepherd them through their next stage of growth.”
In 2022 Toggle has been focused on ramping up production at its 50,000 square foot advanced manufacturing and prefabrication facility in Pottstown, PA. With its first Weaver Workcell installed and two more slated for this summer, the facility serves customers in the Northeast Region of the United States as well as Toronto, Ontario and construction segments including renewable energy, utilities and infrastructure.
“Joe is deeply experienced with robotics, AI and autonomous systems and is a proven leader of growing technology organizations. As we continue our work on Toggle OS and our Weaver Workcell robotic platforms, the expertise Joe brings to the team will help Toggle accelerate into the next phase of autonomous production and commercial expansion,” said Daniel Blank, Toggle CEO and Co-founder. “Joe adds a new level of technology experience and expertise to the Toggle engineering team which will ultimately result in even greater value for our customers and the construction industry.”
Prior to Joining Toggle, Joe served as CTO for Merlin Labs, where he grew the technical team from 5 to 50 people through successful Seed, Series A and Series B rounds of financing by demonstrating twin turboprop aircraft flying autonomously. Previously, he worked at Toyota Research Institute as Director of Autonomous Driving, leading a team of 90, pursuing the dream of a car incapable of causing a crash. He later served as Director of Robotics for a new mobile manipulation product for the home robotics market. Prior to TRI, he was a Project Manager at Boston Dynamics / Google for over $100M in DARPA-funded research that created the Petman / DRC humanoid and LS3 quadruped robot platforms. Prior to that, he worked at Bluefin Robotics as a Project Manager / Sonar expert for US Navy-sponsored autonomous underwater vehicle programs. A former Manager of the MIT Acoustics and Vibration Laboratory, he has lectured graduate courses in Spectral Analysis, Sonar, Radar and Seismic Signal Processing as well as serving with the NATO SACLANT Undersea Research Centre. Joe received his doctorate in Oceanographic Engineering from MIT and WHOI.
Joe joins Toggle at a key inflection point for the company as it works to meet unprecedented construction industry demand for prefabrication and modular pre-assembly in the rebar and structural category. In addition to the Pennsylvania production facility, Toggle Robotics has also expanded it’s R&D footprint in New York and begun building out a perception and AI group in Zurich, Switzerland.
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Toggle was founded in 2016 by Daniel Blank and Ian Cohen to accelerate construction of the buildings and infrastructure communities need most at a time when escalating costs, complexity, safety concerns and constrained labor are continuing to limit productivity.
Powered by a core software application called Toggle OS and the Weaver Workcell industrial robotics platform, Toggle is reinventing the way the steel reinforcement for reinforced concrete gets prepared. Using automation and prefabrication allows a dramatically safer, faster and more accurate product to be delivered just in time to construction sites.
Toggle Robotics and sister company Toggle Construction currently serve the Northeastern US and Ontario Canada with a focus on renewable energy, infrastructure and urban highrise construction.
Toggle has raised over $10M from investors including Tribeca Venture Partners, Blackhorn Ventures, Point 72 Ventures, ThirdSphere, Twenty Seven Ventures, New York Empire State Development, BMW/Mini and Mark Cuban.
More info on Toggle Robotics at www.toggle.is and Toggle Construction at www.toggle.build
