Software Engineering
Robot Kinematics, Controls, Algorithms, Hardware-Level Interactions, UI Design
"Scout"
Wheeled Bipedal Mobile Robot
2022-2023
Scout is a research platform designed to explore the kinematics of combining wheels and legs in a mobile robot. This was a 1-person project, where I was responsible for the CAD, manufacturing, electronics, and software for the entire robot. Scout was an exercise in elementary controls, using PID and feed forward control to their full extents. All software was written in C++. Included writing a custom release of the VESC firmware to integrate inductive PWM encoders into brushless motor controllers.
Recipient of the WPI Robotics Department Award for best Robotics Capstone Project.
Dynamic Robot Kinematics
A focus of my studies is many ways to create smooth, precise robot navigation algorithms. In the video to the left, my robot uses 2 wheel, encoder based odometry combined with an ultrasonic distance sensor for localization and path planning. It also implements a 1-dimensional motion profiler and several PID control loops to create smooth, repeatable motions.
Static Robot Kinematics
Kinematics and Control of Multi-DOF Robot Arms
Implementation of forward and inverse kinematics of a stationary robot arm. This arm was controlled in both real life and modeled in MATLAB simulations. The logic used for controlling this arm was based on the Denavit-Hartenberg convention for robot arms.
This robot also implements computer vision to detect and identify objects on the board in front of the robot. I used a fisheye camera lens to take a picture, then corrected with a distortion correction algorithm, created a blob detection algorithm to identify where the objects are, then converted the centroid coordinates of the objects to real world coordinates.
Brigham & Womens' Hospital Application
Software Engineering Practical
In Spring 2021, I worked on a 7 week long project to design a Java-based prototype application for a navigation assistant for Brigham and Womens' Hospital in Boston, MA. Here, I worked in a team of 11 talented software engineers to quickly produce a mock-up user interface and implement rudimentary features like navigation using Dijkstra's algorithm and a login system with a local database.