Hello, I'm Caleb Hottes

During high school I competed in FRC for 3 years, gaining experience with Computer Aided Design, technical collaboration, integrating designs into the real world. During my third year I co-founded a new sub-team to develop the team's first electronic scouting system. 

During my two years on Team 11109 Pirate Tekerz in the FIRST Tech Challenge, I developed strong engineering skills in CAD design, collaboration, and fabrication, successfully adapting to remote robot building during COVID-19 and helping get the team to its first state competition. 

From 4th to 8th grade I participated in FIRST LEGO League (FLL). FLL introduced me to engineering through building autonomous LEGO robots and developing teamwork, design, and presentation skills that have continued to support my growth in higher-level robotics and beyond. 

In my first robotics project Charles and I worked together to analyze and simulate the kinematics of a Futura Pendulum using analytical and software methods. We derived and evaluated formulas with code, modeled the pendulum with MuJoCo, (A python library) and verified analytical results using the model. 

In my second robotics project, my partner and I implemented a Mahony filter to estimate orientation using data from a phone's IMU. We treated gravity and the Earth's magnetic field as noisy landmarks and used gyroscope data and bias correction to filter the signal. We also explored the TRIAD algorithm, each developing our own variations, and visualized the results using MuJoCo.  

In this project, I analyzed the forward and inverse kinematics—both position and velocity-level—for a 6-DOF robot arm, the NexCOM miniBoT. Using analytical methods and the Denavit-Hartenberg convention, I developed closed-form solutions, including a fast inverse kinematics function that returns multiple solutions. I also implemented an animation system that uses inverse kinematics to follow a path.