The Gist:
Over the summer of 2021, I spent 3 weeks participating in a robotics program sponsored by Stony Brook University, meant to build my strength with basic engineering concepts as well as introducing me to the mindset required to be an effective engineer.
Using the tools & resources mailed home to me, I was at first tasked with solving multiple simple problems, such as building a
simple catapult or having an arduino read data from a sensor, and then later me and a partner were tasked with building a
capstone robot. This put our skills to the test, both in terms of our critical-thinking ability & our ability to work together as
a team, despite the virtual boundaries we had. I was fortunate enough to have a pal from the same school enrolled in the program with me.
The presentation for the capstone project can be found here: https://youtu.be/m2SwvwGeq7c
Now, heres a more detailed look at my experience.
For the first week (the "pre-week"), I compiled most of what I learned into a notebook so I had one spot to look back at when I needed any kind of reference. The notebook can be found here
The instructors basically had us getting stronger with the fundamental skills needed to effectively begin our capstone bot. These topics included:
As we got into the second and third weeks, the program started to focus more on the collaborative aspects of engineering, having us work in a team and, at first, build simple robots with instructions attached. After that, me and my pal both got to work designing a "social robot". Social, in this case, just means it interacts with people in some way.
I wont bore with specifics. Mostly I'll go over the major challenges I faced, and how I had overcome them given the constraints.
First and foremost: constraints. Despite the lavish gifts from the organizers, providing me with an entire kit of SnappyXO pieces and an assortment of various electronics, I still found myself going over-budget and running out of parts.
I also realized just how much designing and re-designing goes into the engineering process.
Even for simpler beginner projects, such as the DC motor fan, I re-designed my fan blades multiple times in order to see how well it pushed air. I spent hours each day just trying different solutions to the same problem. This was especially true when building simple 4 bar mechanisms (which I found to be especially painful but also increcibly intriguing), where even for a simple set of windshield wipers, there were multiple solutions with varying results towards their effectiveness.
The raw electronics were a tad more limiting in this aspect, there was normally one accepted solution, especially since Integrated circuits (ICs) helped to streamline a lot of the process.
That would be the case, anways. But Arduino's basically removed any electronic limit we had and allowed us to accurately control motor speed, spin direction, switch status, so on and so forth. This was especially great since the Arduino basically fits anywhere since its pretty small.
Overall, I had a lot of fun in this program! It taught me a ton and really made me sure that I want to pursue engineering as my future career. It definitely was stressful, but it was also invigorating and a breath of fresh air, especially since most of my exposure to the sciences was on paper, rather than hands on.
They never gave us a certificate though. If you're interested in knowing if this actually happened, please reach out to me via my email (on the main page) and I can get you in contact with an instructor.