AUV Digital Sonar Filter PCB Layout with Protel DXP 2004

AUV, the Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Team at UTD, has interested me at UTD. Partly to be around a robot, and partly to get ready for senior design, I volunteered for the team in Fall 2007 and Spring 2008. During the Fall, I helped test the robot in the pool and organize the lab. During the Spring, I aided Michael Plante in laying out the PCB for a digital sonar filter. In truth, Michael was holding my hand much of the time. It also turned out that AUV only takes senior design projects that start in the Fall; I am starting senior design this spring. Nevertheless, I learned quite a bit about PCB layout, and I got my name in silk on the PCB.

AUV Modeling with SolidWorks

Although UTD has no shop equipment to speak of (in spite of offering Mechanical Engineering Degrees!), AUV toyed with the idea of a new mechanical design. For reference, they wanted a SolidWorks model of the current sub. I offered to make the model, and here is a picture of the sub, the dimensions I used, and the model.

(High School) F.I.R.S.T. Robotics Animation Team with Autodesk Inventor

I did all this Inventor work as the student leader of Dublin Coffman High School's F.I.R.S.T. Robotics animation team. The animation team had two tasks: first, to create a full 3d model of the teams robot and second, to create a short animation that embodied the ideals of F.I.R.S.T. I did all the 3d modeling in Inventor on my own, as I had been fortunate enough to have coincidentally taken a 3 week class at THE Ohio State University the prior summer on how to use Inventor. The other members of the animation team had their hands full trying to learn 3dsMax and Blender to create the short animation, which I was trying to do as well. F.I.R.S.T. only allows 6 weeks from the time they unveil the competition and distribute software to when robots must be shipped and computer graphics uploaded.

(High School) F.I.R.S.T. Robotics Animation Team with 3dsMax

3dsMax is a program used to create and rener high quality scenes. The team was given one licence to create our animation in. I had never, ever, used it before, and it is remains the most complex program I have ever used. It came down to one other guy, Wes, and I doing most of the work in 3dsMax, mostly because of licensing restrictions. Anyway, we started with some tutorials.

Then, we tried to create our own stuff. We were pretty successful in some areas, not so much in others. All of the non-skeletal character models were created by other members of the team using Blender, an open source program similar to 3dsMax. We imported the characters into 3dsMax and for use in the animation. Also, most of the objects in the scenes were created in Inventor and then imported.

Of course, we made a movie, but it looks like something made by high schoolers given 6 weeks to make something with a program they had never touched before.

Messing around with Blender

After surrendering the licenses of 3dsMax and Inventor back to the team, I played around with Blender and made a couple of simple objects. I did this in 2006.