Robotic Arm on Wheels

Personal Project

A story goes with this project: in my first month at SDSU, I overheard an upperclassman mention that they were using “Raspberry Pies” and “Arduinos” to Thrust Vector Control a rocket engine. Confused and intrigued, I purchased a two pack of Arduino Nanos for $6 within a week. I was super excited when I received them. I then proceeded to put them in a plastic drawer in my dorm room… where they sat for 8 months untouched (as you might have guessed, college started becoming hard).

The summer after my first year in college, I decided to pull out that Arduino Nano again. The Robotic Arm on Wheels (RAW) is a personal project that began soon after I first learned how to make an LED Blink in Morse Code using the Arduino Nano. This robotics project evolved as I learned more and more about engineering, electronics, software, and more.

As I went through several design iterations of this custom robot, I developed skills such as:

• Balancing quality, cost, and time management.
• Working with actuators and sensors (Servors, DC Motors, Stepper Motors, RF, IR, Bluetooth)
• Use of basic skills in electronics (Soldering, Transistors, Multimeters, Digital I/O, Analog)
• Programming an Arduino microcontroller board using C code in the Arduino IDE.
• Manufacturing using 3-D Printing (Flashforge Creator Pro, G-Code, Slicing Software)

My continued fascination with robotics has led me to own five Raspberry Pies and build many other custom systems around my home.