Role: Project advisor/mentor
Scope: Mentored several students as part of UCLA’s High School Summer Research Program.
This is a heavily modified PhantomX AX hexapod retrofitted with multiple sensors that allow it to walk autonomously over rough terrain.
These sensors and the onboard microcontroller form a tactile sensing/proprioceptive system that allows hexapod to walk over obstacles without vision sensors.
In the summer after my first year of graduate school, I volunteered to be part of the UCLA’s High School Summer Research Program (HSSRP). This program aims to develop students from underserved communities and prepare them to go to tier-1 research universities by giving them an opportunity to participate in research with graduate students and faculty at UCLA.
I mentored a total of four students as part of this program and taught them a blended curriculum of programming, electronics and mechanical design, culminating with them working on creating a system to allow a ‘blind’ (no vision sensors) hexapod able to walk over unmodeled & unseen obstacles in a robust and repeatable way. The poster below summarizes our work.
