Welcome

I took a semester off school to pursue an 8-month long internship at NASA – Jet Propulsion Laboratory where I worked on the Barefoot Rover project. The purpose of this project is to develop a tactile sensing rover wheel that uses machine learning to enable in-situ terrain classification which enables safer rover driving and achieves various science goals. I acted as a liaison between the test-bed’s hardware team and the machine learning customer. Furthermore, I optimized test-bed operation by successful completion of tasks such as redesigning and fabricating an electronics box, designing and fabricating a slip mechanism, and helping start ROS implementation. When the summer interns arrived I was tasked with helping on board new members and organizing the team. Overall, this experience vastly increased my design skills with real-life practice while also exercising my team leadership and soft skills.

Space Works is a professional development class aimed at giving engineers and scientists real-life experience through a project-based curriculum. This class has laid the groundwork necessary for me to be successful in my other endeavors. In the first session of the class we had to develop a lander that could safely fall three stories and mechanically deploy a dummy payload. Then, in the second semester we designed and machined an instrument that needed to be capable of taking infrared pictures in vacuum. We even used NX to create thermal models of our instrument. Overall, this class gave me valuable experience drawing something in CAD and then fabricating it. In third session of the class we learned how to write proposals and submitted it NASA-Marshall for funding.