Mateo Peña Doll

During the winter session (IAP) of my sophomore year, I competed in the anual 6.270 Autonomous Lego Robotics Competition of 2012. The competition involved autonomously navigating a playing field using a visual tracking system, capturing territories by spinning gears, accumulating resources (ping-pong balls), and depositing them before the end of the round. With two other team members, I built and programmed the "Brave Little Toaster". Here is a video of the entire competition . This is one of the seeding rounds . The autonomous Brave Little Toaster. Able to navigate, capture territories, acquire ping-pong balls, and deposit them while competing against another robot. Building legos required a few hours to get used to. Reinforcements are vital to avoid falling apart when running into walls or other robots, dimensions have to line up, gearing has to be well supported to minimize friction, and the design of systems is preferably as simple as possible. We started with ...

As the Phi Delta Theta fraternity's house manager, I organized and ran the biannual work week. For the 2013 work week, one of my organized projects was to build a dance platform for our parties! You see, a fraternity must stay equipped with competitive party setups including a great sound system, lights, and of course a dance platform. This had been done in the past, but the platform had been trashed because there was nowhere to store it. I knew it was imperative to make the legs removable, so that the table could fit into a closet, out of the way during "business hours". I designed the table with six reinforced legs, alternating in direction. The design intent was to have the platform stiff in all directions, so as people danced even in the oddest most aggressive ways, the platform would not collapse or flip over. The last thing the frat needed was a lawsuit on our hands, and most importantly we need everyone to stay safe at our parties! To assemble the table, the le...