AKKHIL MORKONDA Experience / WHOOP Email me
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Scaling test for a wearable fleet.

Manufacturing Test Engineering Intern, WHOOP, Jan 2026 to Jun 2026

Rebuilt the hardware-in-the-loop test system across 12 fixtures and built the optical testbed that characterizes the sensor's LEDs.

30%faster test time
95%pytest coverage
$1.8Msaved by battery diagnostics
40%fewer false failures

Inside the testbed

Blackout enclosure

Blocks ambient light so only the LED under test reaches the probe.

Breadboard and motor controllers

Everything bolts to an optical breadboard. Three motor controllers drive the stage, one per axis.

Thorlabs 3-axis stage

Motorized X, Y and Z translation stages move the probe through space above the device.

Precision fixture

A dowel-pinned aluminum bracket on the Z stage carries the fiber probe head. A pocket in the base plate locates the device.

Fiber and analysers

Fiber carries the collected light to Feasa LED and IR analysers that read intensity and color.

WHOOP 5.0

Sensor side up in its pocket. The LEDs switch on and the probe maps the light above them.

What it measures

The probe steps through a 3D grid above each LED and records brightness at every point. The result is a map of how the light spreads, compared LED to LED and device to device.

Drag to rotate. Hover a point for its reading.
DimRelative brightnessPeak

Illustrative model. Swap in exported scan data for the real site.

$1.8M

Bad capacitors, caught from current alone

Firmware streams the battery current over BLE. An FFT exposes ripple a failing capacitor adds, and a logistic regression flags it at 99% accuracy.

✓PASS

Current spectrum of one unit. Illustrative model, not WHOOP data.

30%

A test fleet that scales

Legacy ATE ran every step in series. A DAG scheduler runs independent steps side by side across 12 fixtures. Coverage rose to 95% and false failures fell 40%.

Fleet run time100%
F FlashB BootS SensorsP BatteryO OpticalR Radio

Illustrative step names and timings.