Art, Engineering, & Robotics

Here Are Some More Projects I Did in Engineering and Art Throughout High School

In this project, I designed and built a sumo bot with a custom car-style shell. I entered it in a sumo bot tournament, with a goal of submitting the most aesthetic bot in the competition.

Structurally: the chassis and side gear plates are laser-cut plywood and everything else is 3D printed. To optimize mass distribution, I got creative. I filled the old battery slot with rocks and mounted the battery vertically between the two DC motors.

The goal was autonomous sensing and path finding. For this maze robot, I built a 2-wheeled platform with an additional balancing cone and integrated an ultrasonic sensor for wall detection and navigation. This robot was laser-cut from plywood.

My early prototypes didn't fall the way I expected, so in the final design, I increased the surface area. While this modification helped, it was not enough to keep the system stable in the air. If I were to iterate again, I would try a retractable mechanism that can expand the surface area within a tight space. I would also add more weight to the lower part of the structure, so that it drops in the correct orientation. I tried adding weight in this version, but it still wasn't enough weight to control the fall.

In this project, I used FoilSim to design my own airfoil, laser-cut the pieces, and assemble them into a small wind turbine. I tested it outdoors and was able to record some performance data even though the conditions that day weren't extremely windy.

In this project, the challenge was to use a flimsy and easily breakable wood, balsa wood, to create a tower which can support all of the weight. My first design, the square model, was surprisingly able to carry all the weights more sturdily than my second design, the triangular model. The T-shaped structures seemed to be much more impactful on the sides when carrying weight, which is why the first one may have succeeded more easily. Ultimately, both models did end up succeeding in carrying all the weight.

The goal of this project was to design a bridge which can support as much weight as possible, using only card stock. My first prototype was way too small in length which made it slip without reaching its full potential. The extenders, which you can see in the image, helped the design reach its true potential and allowed it to hold a substantial amount of weight!

Being one of my first times 3D printing, I experimented with creating a custom nose cone and custom laser-cut wings for a rocket before launching it.

This is a drawing of a lego build I constructed.

This piece is a still life study of a pumpkin arranged on layered fabric. I explored how the folds in the fabric create shape, depth, and shadow around the object.

Landscape Project