School Projects

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Bumblebee CAD Animation

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E128 - Advanced Engineering Graphics
Spring 2010 with Professor Lieu

Earned the Alexander and Ethel Levens Award for excellence in engineering graphics, computer aided design, 3D modeling and animation
  • Software - Pro/Engineer Wildfire & 3D Studio Max 
  • Modeling -  Reverse engineered Bumblebee the Transformer from an action figure toy. Collaborated with a team of four over three months to model and assemble the eighty components. Personally modeled twenty individual leg components from the hip to the toes. 
  • Assembly  - Components assembled with translational and rotational constraints on each joint.  Inverse kinematics tools were used to simulate the robotic motion of the transformer.
  • Animation  - Rendered a 10 minute animation with multiple scenes and transitions. Animated the assembly of the eighty components and transformation from robot to automobile. Included sound track, lighting, and special effects. Wrote an entertaining storyboard with Bumblebee dancing after the final credits.
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Tech Talk

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ME110 - New Product Development 
Spring 2011 with Professor Agogino

  • Project - Investigated why some elderly are not always comfortable using technology and designed a service to address the problem. Tech Talk was designed as a simple to use online video chatting and web help service that was accessible with a single click of the desktop icon.
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Pick and Place Robot

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ME102B - Mechatronics
Fall 2010 with Professor Kazerooni

  • Overview - Senior design project to prototype a device controlled by an Arduino micro-controller in one semester. Built a parallel robotic arm where the effector end remains parallel to the ground
  • Kinematics - Solved a system of equations using inverse kinematics to relate the angular position of the top parallelogram to the position of the effector. Prototyped and tested the dynamics equations in MATLAB. Compiled final C++ code using an Arduino micro-controller.
  • Software - Taking input from the user through a Wii controller, the micro-controller interpreted the signal to desired coordinate in 3D space and translated that location to a series of output angles on the robotic arm. The micro-controller sent corresponding PWM signals to the 3 servo actuators on the robot.
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Finite Element Code

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ME280 - Finite Element Method
Fall 2011 with Professor Zohdi

  • Coding - Wrote FEM code in MATLAB from scratch to understand the fundamentals and mathematics of the finite element method. Initially wrote a code to solve a 1D differential equation solution of a cantilever bar with linear basis functions progressing to non-linear basis functions and then a 2D FEM solver. Also wrote code to mesh 2D and 3D shape as well as a mesh refinement scheme for 1D. Compared code perfomance and mount of post-processing for a conjugate gradient solver versus Gaussian elimination. Used numerical methods such as Gaussian integration and Newton’s method to evaluate and solve the solutions.
  • Testing - Compared final FEM solutions to analytical solutions of differential equations. Used best approximation theorem to evaluate the potential energy of the solution and assess convergence. Solved simulations for linear, quadratic, and cubic basis functions with varying mesh sizes to find the reasonable combination of computation time and solution accuracy
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P51-B 3D Model

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E128 - Advanced Engineering Graphics 
Spring 2010 with Professor Lieu


  • Surface Model - Created a 3D surface model of a vintage P-51B Mustang plane in 3D Studio Max. Applied surface material finishes and insignia details created in Photoshop. Rendered a short animation of the plane flying over Berkeley campus. Individual project completed over the course of three weeks.
  • Animation - Used keys and motion controllers to generate the flying path of the plane. Created an illusion of spinning propellers by using a glass disk. Also generated an illusion of a 3D campus by mapping a 2D photo onto the inside surface of a 3D sphere.
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Wind Turbine Design

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ME163 - Aerodynamics
Fall 2010 with Professor Savas

 

  • Computation - Calculated bending and twisting moments on a blade with constant airfoil cross section and varying chord and twist angles. Compared analytical results to real world windmills of similar size.

  • Coding - Wrote code in MATLAB to design a windmill blade. Determined geometric and aerodynamic characteristics of blade such as total power and thrust output. Individual project completed over the course of one semester. Compiled results in reports written in LaTeX about airfoil and turbine blade analysis.
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Automatic Pencil Sharpener

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ME130 - Planar Machinery
Spring 2010 with Professor Yousseffi

  • Project -  Designed and built an automatic pencil sharpener that used a four bar mechanism to move a sharpener into place to sharpen a rotating pencil. The pencils were fed into the device and fell through the bottom when finished.