I have worked on a fair amount of personal and collaberative projects over my career. Here is a showcase of some of my favorites.
CLEVERarm
Corose
Ball Shooter
Eagle Scout Project
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CLEVERarm
Description
CLEVERarm is a rehabilitation exoskeleton designed by graduate students at Texas A&M to help stroke patients regain their full motor control.
CLEVERarm works on two fronts. The first being the physical world where the exoskeleton exists and the second being a virtual reality environment. Patients will be strapped into the arm where they can interact with a virtual environment that is familiar to them. In our case the environment was a kitchen where several meals could be prepared.
My Role
I managed a team of fellow students to create the virtual environment that the exoskeleton could interact with. This virtual environment was a kitchen where users could cook meals based on a dynamic library of recipes.
I specifically worked on the cooking backend systems responsible for dynamically loading in recipes from xml files, loading these recipes into virtual space, the cooking system and finally the communication from the exoskeleton to our virtual environment. My favorite system I worked on was the communication from the exoskeleton to a virtual space. I enjoyed this part of the work as I got to work with another team of developers who worked on the physical arm. This was fairly hard because the systems they used were created in LabView (a visual block based programming system) whereas the virtual environment's backend was C#. We ended up using TCP sockets to transmit the data over LAN. I worked with them to devise a way of formatting useful data for our virtual arm to use.
Languages and Technologies
Unity3D, C#
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Corose
Description
Corose is a spaceship manuevering game I started to develop back in high school. It was the first game I designed and worked on with the intent of creating a complete product. I taught myself to work with tools like Unity3D and how to write code in C#. Luckily for me, there were many articles and blog posts about how to start developing games using these tools.
Corose became a passion project for me. It was the testing grounds for my development and design skills. I wanted to create a game people could enjoy yet make it challenging enough that someone couldn't just complete all the levels in a few hours.
Languages and Technologies
Unity3D, C#
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Ball Shooter
Please click "View More" to play!
Description
Ball Shooter is a clone of the popular ios game Ballz that I wrote in under 24hrs. I made this game because I enjoyed playing the ios version and I wanted a desktop alternative. Other flash versions of the game existed but I wanted the challenge of writing this in under a day.
Languages and Technologies
Unity3D, C#
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Eagle Scout Project
Eagle Project
Description
In high school, I earned the rank of Eagle Scout by the Boy Scouts of America. As part of my leadership requirements, I had to “plan, develop and give leadership to others in a service project”; I built a 400 square foot pergola with a concrete foundation for a local church in my community.
The Need
I went to the church and asked them if they had any needs and how I could serve them. They listed a few options out but one caught my attention more than the others. They wanted a pergola to provide shade for people using their volleyball courts. Over the next several weeks, I met with the church to flesh out the details of this project. During this time, I created a handful of renders and 3D models of what the finished product may look like.
Working with the church, I learned how important it was to talk to the client and truly understand their objectives up front. I also had to remain flexible to adapt to changing requirements during the execution of the project.
Plan Design and Permits
Now the hard part, I had to obtain a permit from the city. Since this was my project, my parents were not with me. As a fifteen-year-old kid, walking down to the permit office in city hall was very intimidating. The permit officer scoured over my plans asking questions over every detail. Exhausted, I thought I had a solid request. And, it wasn’t. He declined my permit; I needed more details in my plans. Several weeks later, I went back with more details and better 3D renders. Again, my request was declined. By the third time, I was given approval. I was relieved!
Trying to obtain a permit was very difficult. I consider myself a detail oriented person but didn’t realize the required standard of excellence needed in my city. Now, I understand by designing a structure, anyone using it could be injured if it collapsed through faulty design. Through this challenge, I learned to never give up and not take setbacks personally.
Planning
Once the design was finalized, I created detailed construction plans that included simple step-by-step instructions with pictures for my volunteers. Planning a large service project and having it go off without a hitch requires many logistical aspects to work together as a whole. I had to procure about $5,000 worth of wood, hardware and concrete. I also needed to recruit and organize my volunteers by the different project stages. And, plan the sequencing of each and every element.
I had not always been the best planner but my Eagle Project pushed me to improve. If I had not planned everything out well, this project would have never gotten off the ground.
Execution
Over a five-day period, my primary job was to safely lead the team as we constructed the pergola. I trained over 25 people in total. By taking a modular approach, it was easy to communicate with the different construction teams. I used the EDGE method (Explain, Demonstrate, Guide and Enable) to train my volunteers towards success. When it was all done, we were able to drink a cold glass of lemonade underneath the shade of our work.
At the time, I had never led a group of people this large before. I enjoyed stepping back and seeing my project come together after the year it took to plan and organize it. I also organized a group of scouts to participate in a formal presentation to the beneficiary during their services.
Languages and Technologies
Unity3D, C# -
