Hey there! Sorry for being gone for a bit. It’s been quite a busy semester.

Just a few quick things. Firstly, I’ve started drawing. My goal is to draw one thing per day, and to encourage myself to do this, I have created a Tumblr: Annie’s Daily Drawings. They aren’t very good yet, but the goal is to improve little by little through repetition. If I want to be a product designer, I need to know how to sketch, don’t I?

Secondly, my design project for this semester is building a robot that can traverse an obstacle course, climb over a wall, autonomously navigate a chute using proximity sensors, and deliver a medicine kit to a light source. Mimicking a search and rescue robot, Rocky (it has to climb stairs, okay?) has successfully conquered the wall, and we are working on the autonomous navigation and the arm as we speak. Rocky uses tri-lobe wheels to climb over the wall and has a low gear ratio on the back wheels to provide lots of torque and to give us the precise control we need to navigate the course. Rocky’s brain is a Teensyduino, a version of Arduino, and we’re having fun learning this new system, which is different from the VEX system used in previous years.

Thirdly, my summer plans are in place! I am interning at Liquid Robotics in Sunnyvale, CA, and will be coding under the supervision of James Gosling. I am so thrilled to be working in the field of underwater robotics, and with such an incredible mentor to boot!

I’ll have a full post about Rocky once the project is complete, along with a final design report, but for now, keep up with my drawings and encourage me to keep going!

~Annie