This research was conducted with Daniel Nevius and Jenny Zhang under the guidance of Professor Robert Howe and Barry Griffin as a 91r independent research class at Harvard University.

The purpose of this project was to develop a winch design and working prototype for a balloon powered technology that harnesses the lift and buoyancy provided by inflated helium balloons to lift and move heavy payloads.  The system consists of a suspended helium balloon connected to winching systems on top of movable robotic platforms.  It could be implemented on land with helium balloons or under water with buoys.  It has real world applications for members of the marine industry, governmental organizations, and the United States Navy.  For example, the system could be used for deep-sea mining, oceanic clean up, or maintenance of fish farms.

This research was conducted with Taylor Courier, Eric Kurz, and Patrick Scott under the guidance of Dr. Robert Ray as part of the 2010 NASA Robotics Academy at Marshall Space Flight Center.

The purpose of this project was to create a high performance sensor platform with hardware-level data processing capabilities by replacing the proprietary electronics and control system of a military IED examination robot, the MARCbot.  The significance of this type of system is that it decreases the amount of data that must be transmitted to a remote computer.  This is useful in situations where a Disruption Tolerant Network (DTN) is required due to a significant communication delay between a remote host and the controlled device.  This situation could arise when controlling a robotic rover on Mars, where there is a thirty-minute delay between initial transmission and data acquisition from the rover.

This research was conducted during a summer internship at Rice University in the RiSYS Engineering Lab.  I worked with a graduate student, Andrew Lynch, under Professor Fathi Ghorbel.  During this internship, I focused on pipe inspection robotics using internal and external methods.  These methods primarily involve magnetic flux leakage (MFL) to detect changes in ferromagnetic structures.  I developed a novel method for analyzing MFL data to detect defects in pipes.