You can explore all my projects on my Professional Instagram @katiaengineering!
Want to hear about launching rockets? Or competing with universities across all of Australasia in motorsport? Or maybe engineering outreaches in rural Australia? I post about all these, and my other work experiences, projects, successes and outreaches. You can find more videos, posts and stories on my Instagram, just like this one about my fibreglass racecar seat.
A group of friends and I wanted to create a wearable step tracker that can play songs and sound effects through a speaker. I was in charge of researching and designing an analog low-pass filter for the accelerometer. We created a shield PCB that an Ardunio Nano R4 was mounted to. This meant our final project could register steps taken by moving the PCB, and display progress on a screen that would unlock songs to play. We used Altium and LTSpice for designing our PCB and managing electrical flow.
In a group project at university, it was my role to have an industrial robot replace a wheel on an F1 car. I utilised the Peter-Corke's Robotic Toolbox to apply inverse kinematics and object detection/avoidance to the code. I recreated a real life robot (the IRB1200) by recording the DH parameters and aligning them with 3D models. The final project saw five robots working together to execute a full pitstop, including testing on robots in the lab. I now am lucky enough to share my passion by tutoring this same subject.
By using Fusion360's Topology Optimization and Generative Design features, I was able to optimise a pair of 3D printed pliers to apply a maximum force to an object. To strengthen my design in particular places, I utilised BambuLab's printing features such as variable infill and layer thickness in specific areas. This was a short fun project that strengthened my 3D design skills.
In a project during my mechatronic studies, I worked with a team of 4 to practice our skills in sensors and control. This consisted of programming a colour detection and shape identification algorithm using MATLAB and ROS, and converting camera coordinates to 3D space in order to direct the DoBot Magician robot to pick up coloured coins and place them in their corresponding boxes.
I've been working to create an automatic system that collects and deposits tennis balls as a part of the WARMAN Design and Build Competition. This was a group project so it doubled as an exercise of project management and collaboration. We went through the engineering practice of problem identification, designing, manufacturing, prototyping, testing and finally reflection. We also created circuit schematics and animations of the CAD models as content for our final presentation.
As a member of the UTS Motorsports Formula SAE team, in the Autonomous division we set to create a miniature version of our formula-open style autonomous car in order to test our systems. We set out on a 4-week intense design challenge, designing, prototyping and manufacturing a mini car. I had a lot of creative freedom in this design, which allowed me to practice conquering analysis paralysis and guide others with the same issue.
As a member of the UTS Motorsports Formula SAE team, I was able to create a fibreglass seat from scratch. It was so cool to go though the stages of prepping the mold, cutting and laying the fibreglass up, and then vacuum sealing, demolding, trimming, painting and installing the seat. And it was all done before our car reveal at Sydney SXSW Exhibition!
As a part of the UTS chapter of Engineers without Borders (EWB), I spent 5 days visiting schools in Albury Wondonga and presenting fun and engaging engineering activities. We introduced the students to real-world problems, and got them to design and test their own prototypes to solve these issues. It was such fun inspiring kids from years 2 to 12 to get keen about engineering! See more info and photos from this outreach on my Instagram below.
This is an automated F1 pitstop machine with adjustable speed. It uses an ultrasonic sensor to see how far away the car is, and when the car is at the correct position, the pit stop commences. A stepper motor and servo power a rack and pinion system to reach out, grab the tire and bring it back, as well as replace it with a new one. Additionally, factors can be changed after logging in with an RFID tag. Fun fact, this project granted me a tutoring position in the course at UTS.
As a part of the National Questacon Invention Convention (NQIC) in 2021, I designed and created an Arduino COVID-19 scanner. I was lucky enough to be tutored by some mechatronic employees at The Creative Element for this project. This was such a fun project and I learnt so much about about Arduinos and their code! Read more about this project below.
Using an 8" Dobsonian Telescope, and my phone camera, I have been able to take some magnificent photos such as the one above, which is the Orion Nebula. A passion of mine is to share this love of space with others so I hosted a youth outreach to do so. Read about this youth outreach and more on my Instagram below.
I very much enjoy CAD design as it a platform for creativity, and has many applications in different fields, especially engineering. For this project created in Blender, I aimed to practice my skills in; the technical manipulation of objects, the use of modifiers, additive and subtractive modelling, and refining the details of the model to increase the complexity displayed. Read more about this CAD project on my Instagram below.