Nick Crispie

Roborrito: World's First Fully Automated, Made-to-Order Burrito Vending Machine

For my Senior Capstone project in Mechanical Engineering at UC Berkeley, I was part of a team that designed and built a burrito vending machine, complete with customizable ordering and full automation from picking up a burrito from a stack, to dispensing and heating ingredients, to heating and then finally folding the finished burrito. I led the mechanical design, manufacturing, and integration aspects of the project over the course on one semester. The project won 1st prize at the Berkeley Design Showcase out of over 20 other teams.

I focused on the Mechanical design of the structure and linear tracks, as well as the manufacturing and systems integration parts of the project. It was a lot of work, but we ended up with decent burritos out of it!

Check out more details of how the system worked and get introduced to my other amazing team members on the project website: http://roborrito.weebly.com/

CalSol: The UC Berkeley Solar Vehicle Team

During all 4 years of my Undergraduate Degree, I worked on a street-legal, fully solar-electric car that we raced all over the country. Over the four years, I wore many hats: Mechanical Design and Manufacturing Engineer to becoming our first Operations director to kick-start that area of the team. In my Sophomore and Junior years, I led all engineering activities as the Engineering Director before transitioning to a Senior Engineer position and training the new crop of young leaders. Over the course of my time on the team, we built a full car and raced it 4 different times, totaling over 3,000 miles traveled over a dozen plus states, improving our performance each time to the point that we won the Formula Sun Grand Prix after my Senior year on the team. Some of my personal projects was a complete redesign of the integration of the chassis and composite shell, implementing an FMEA process to review race procedures and vehicle engineering, as well as forming the principal engineering studies behind CalSol's next generation vehicle, a multi-seater Cruiser-class vehicle meant to demonstrate the viability of solar technology for the masses.

1/10th Scale Line Following Autonomous Car

For my Capstone project course in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at UC Berkeley, I worked on a team to develop an autonomous line following racecar. I designed a custom brushless motor controller, developed a real-time software system for detecting the line, and designed a steering and speed controller to get around the track as fast as possible. My team, Bear Area Racing Team (BART, for the public transit system in the SF Bay Area), placed 1st out of 12 team at the UC Berkeley competition and 3rd overall out of 17 teams at the annual NATCAR competition held at UC Davis.

Gravure Circuit Printer Development

While studying in my undergrad at UC Berkeley, I worked on Mechanical Systems design and validation for a Gravure Printing, a type of printing that allows for directed deposition onto a flexible substrate. The printer that I helped to design and build is one of the first of it's kind and will pave the way for revolutionary development in flexible electronics.