About

Hey, I’m Rick van Loo. I’m an Embedded Software Developer based in Enschede, The Netherlands, got an MSc in Embedded Systems and currently I am working as a System Engineer / Go developer for BauWatch Technology Group.

My interests involve modern software design in the embedded world. Bare-metal microcontrollers, RTOS, Embedded Linux, FPGAs and even some backend. Lately a lot of my time goes into AI on the edge: getting vision models to actually run fast on constrained hardware, which turns out to be equal parts model testing and squeezing the most out of the silicon. As long as it is not too high-level, I am happy!

Work Experience Link to heading

Sept. 2024-Now

System Engineer / Software Developer; BauWatch Technology (Enschede, NL)

Skills: Go. Microservices. Embedded Linux Development. Backend Development. Computer Vision. Engineer in a small research team building proof of concepts. Built an edge-AI PoC, designing everything from the on-device inference pipeline to the storage and backend behind it. Responsible for the technical analysis behind the selection of the team’s next accelerated edge platform. Worked on various computer vision applications, interfacing with ONVIF cameras and Modbus devices.

Jan. 2024 - Jul. 2024

Embedded Developer, New Product Team; Nedap Livestock Management (Groenlo, NL)

Skills: Bare-metal C. RTOS. Go. Altium Designer. Sole embedded developer on a new battery-powered wireless product, responsible for the firmware end to end. Besides the software, I also did the PCB design for this product in Altium Designer.

Jan. 2023 - Jan. 2024

Embedded Developer, SmartTag Team; Nedap Livestock Management (Groenlo, NL)

Skills: Bare-metal C. Python. MATLAB. Worked on the firmware for both the SmartTag 3.0 Neck and the newer SmartTag Ear low-power wireless sensor tags for individual animal monitoring. Sole inventor on Dutch patent NL2037344B1 (granted Oct. 2025), which extends tag battery life by keeping the transceiver switched off until the accelerometer data actually looks like animal behaviour.## Education

2018-2022

MSc, Embedded Systems; University of Twente (Enschede, NL)

Master Thesis: Investigating Approximate FPGA Multiplication for Increased Power-Efficiency

2014-2018

BSc, Electrical Engineering; University of Twente (Enschede, NL)

Bachelor Thesis: Increasing Throughput of FPGA-Based Streaming Applications By Using Pipelining

Certificates Link to heading

• Altium Designer - Essentials
  • Sept. 2023. Reference: ACT-2323263

Publications Link to heading

• Rasheed, Y., Van Der Wijk, R. H., Van Loo, R., Morris, R. A. J., Gillani, G. A., Kokkeler, A. B. J., & Ottavi, M. (2026). AMPEREISH: Approximate multipliers for power efficiency in FPGA designs using Internal-Self-Healing. IEEE Access, 14, 60252–60267.

• Asghar, A., Van Loo, R., Kruiper, T., and Ziener, D. 2019. Optimizing FPGA-Based Streaming Applications for Throughput Using Pipelining. In 2019 International Conference on Field-Programmable Technology (ICFPT) (pp. 351–354).

Patents Link to heading

• R. van Loo, A method and apparatus for operating an animal tag, Dutch Patent NL2037344B1, Oct. 6, 2025.