K'NEX Computer

Fall of my junior year I began work on logic gates made out K'NEX using a system of balls. Two members of my Computer Architecture class joined me and we set out to create an entire 4-bit computer. The picture above is of a 4-bit adder.

There are more photos and updates at knexcomputer.blogspot.com

Fred the RoboWheel

While working in the Olin Robotics Lab, Jeff DeCew and I decided to make a flexible wheel robot that would deform its shape in order to roll. After we successfully created a 10-minute feasibility prototype, I began work on a simulation. I modeled the flexible plastic rim with masses and hinge springs, comparing my model's deformation to compression data we took with an Instron machine.

From there I created a control system that changed the shape of the wheel based on which section was touching the ground. I tried this on 3 different robot designs.

The simulation was written in Python using the VPython 3D library. All physics were hand coded by me.

Window Walker

The final project for the Design Nature class was a walker that had to climb up a window using bellows, suctions cups, and one motor. I worked with Mark Cavolowsky, Jeff Dezso and Hossam Banaja to create one of only 3 walkers in our grade that succesfully climbed vertically.

For some reason, Mark and I decided not to use any gears in our design (we were the only team to do this). Instead, I came up with a crazy crankshaft/linkage contraption to transform the motor's rotation into the linear motion required to drive the system. What made it more complicated is that the motion of the bellows needed to be 90 degrees out of phase with the expanding/contracting motion of the device.

Video of the walker working for the first time. You can see Mark and Jeff's reflections in this window.

Hopper Project

Freshman year, for a class called Design Nature, we were tasked with making a plastic device that could jump. It had to use around 3 joules of energy or less and had to wait a second or two after being loaded before jumping. My design used suction cups for the delay and rubber tubing for the energy storage. It was designed to have minimal assembly: the pieces were cut on a laser cutter, and then snapped together.

It was the first hopper to hit the ceiling, forcing the professor to install a plastic sheet to protect the tiles.

Lego Sumo Robot

I was one of 100 high school juniors accepted to the New Jersey Governor School of Technology. During part of the month-long program at Rutgers, we made robots from the Lego Mindstorms kit. The final robot project was a sumo wrestling match. Two robots would face off and attempt to push each other out of the ring. The robots could use light sensors to detect the edge of the ring, and had to start at size smaller than 10x10x10cm.

My team's robot (on the right) was the biggest of the 20 in the contest. It used two large, high friction wheels driven by worm gears to prevent back-driving. In the front it had vertically mount treads designed to lift an opponent off the ground, stealing its traction. It also had a telescoping arm that shifted the center of mass of the robot back over the wheels.

The robot was unstoppable when faced head-on, but was vulnerable when turning. In the final match, even though we knocked our opponent off in the first round, they beat us in the next 2 rounds by pushing from the side. We came in second.