FIRST Robotics
Last Updated: 12/30/2022
2016 Season - FIRST Stronghold
This was my first year of high-school robotics. I was very new to the world of mechanical design and industrial manufacturing. I took this year as a training year; learning from my fellow students and mentors the fundamentals of the engineering design process. This involved prototyping, CAM, CNC manufacturing, and some small individual CAD projects. This also meant supporting other senior members projects in the ways in which I could.
2017 Season - FIRST STEAMworks
I designed the drivetrain which involved the gearbox and frame of the robot. I also designed a specialty drivetrain mechanism called Parallel Drop Drive (PDD). It was comprised of two pancake pneumatics that actuated small arms with omnidirectional wheels on their ends. These arms would lift the robot up onto only its front omni-directional wheels and the PDD omni-directional wheels. This mechanism made it so that our robot was unable to be pinned by opposing robots, increasing our efficiency.
For this robot, I was responsible for the design and manufacturing of the drivetrain and climbing mechanism. For the drivetrain, this involved designing the frame and gearbox for the robot. For the climbing mechanism, I went through over 40 iterations to land on a hyper-modular design that was able to come in at under 12 pounds. This was my main constraint and means that 100% of the robots weight needed to be lifted by a mechanism comprising of less than 10% of its overall weight.
2019 Season - FIRST Deep Space
My senior year of high school robotics. This was the year that I held the positions of President, Head of Design and Manufacturing, and Head of Strategy. On the robot, I was responsible for the drivetrain and the game-piece acquisition mechanisms. For the drivetrain, this entailed design the gearbox and frame of the robot. For the game-piece acquisition mechanisms, I designed a singular entity capable of handling two very different game pieces; one a playground ball and one a large plastic disc.
