Artifact - Controls and Robotics

In the fall quarter of my Senior year, I decided to explore a new track of EE that I hadn't yet before - controls and robotics. Every quarter, the EE department offers a special topics class (EE 399) that is usually only taught once. This quarter, the class focused on robotics, more specifically, robotic arms. This sounded fascinating, and like a great pairing for the controls class I was also planning on taking (EE 447), so I registered for both.

This ended up being a great match, and during this quarter, I learned a lot about control systems and robotics, and was able to apply it in both a theoretical and applied manner. In my controls class, I learned about the theory and principles that govern robotics, and in the robotics class, I was then able to apply these principles in a hands-on manner.

We engaged in several interesting (albeit very tricky) labs, but my favorite was our last one, where we had to operate the classic children's toy - the peg and hole set. We were tasked with picking up the pegs, placing them in the correct hole, and then hammering them into place. This proved to be very difficult, and took several dozen hours to get working. However, when it finally did, we had the end result below!