Austin’s Digital Portfolio
Mechanical Engineer
Tensegrity Research
Tensegrity is best described as rods in compression suspended by cables in tension. The name comes from the combination of the words “tensile” and “integrity.” When looked at from a robotics perspective, they are often underactuated systems, which makes them challenging to model and control. As part of my Masters program at BYU I’ve worked on developing project that allows users to input the configuration of the structure and then simulate it.
“Development of a Continuous Cable Tensegrity” Conference Paper
3D Print Slicer
I wrote my own simple 3D print slicer. The goal of this project was to learn how use a GUI tool in C++. I used Qt for the user interface, VTK for the graphics/visualization and wrote my own G-Code processor.
Robotics Project
I 3D printed a 5-axis robot arm from HowToMechatronics connected it to a Raspberry Pi and used ROS2 with MoveIt for the path planning to control it in either joint space or cartesian space with an Xbox controller.
SLAM Class
I learned and programmed from scratch several SLAM (Simultaneous localization and mapping) algorithms including a particle filter, EKF and UKF.
Capstone Project
My senior year capstone project was sponsered by Disney Studios to create a telepresence robot they could ship with the film equipment to remote set that would allow the exeuctives to remotely visit and interact with the crews on set.
3D Printing
I’ve learned a lot of technical skills through 3D printing. I currently have a Bambu Lab printer, but for four years I had an Ender 3 V2 that I added a BLTouch sensor for bed leveling to, upgraded the motherboard, experimented with custom versions of Marlin firmware, added a Raspberry Pi with a webcam and Klipper to increase the speeds I could print at and get remote control, wired the LEDs into the frame, programmed with custom effects and much more.
Mechatronics Project
With my team I built an autonomous robot that was able to collect ping pong balls from a dispenser then navigate and shoot them into the correct goal based on the color of the balls.
Light Boxes
As a hobby, I’ve been creating custom made light boxes. It started with the fatherhood one shown above that I made for a friend who had recently became a dad, then I started making more and selling them. The front face is mostly thin white plastic so that when the LEDs are lite up behiend it creates a really fun show. The boxes run WLED and I use 5V individually adressable LED strips that I wire in to the back plate which has greatly improved my soldering skills.
You can check out my Etsy shop below:
Self-Hosting
I also self-host a number of applications on my home server (including this digital portfolio). The one I use the most and share with the most people is my instance of Mealie, a recipie keeping program. I’ve learned a lot about docker, linux and networking through my journey with my self-hosted apps.
Home Automation
I’ve also experimented and played with home automation, self-hosting Home Assistant on my server. Using an ESP32 I created a device that fit inside the casing of the blinds in my room and my server automatically opened them when my phone alarm went off and closed them at sunset.