By Chris McCarthy, Edwin lords over the crew until Chase arrives. The backstory of Amanda’s conflict with Edwin comes out. And things go from bad to worse… Ambassador Trong walks onto the bridge of Amanda’s ship. His attaches, Liam and Sturgis, enter with him. His pageant guard Maritha, walks just in front of him waving […]
By Chris McCarthy The Police Officer and Leo arrive at the house in Santa Ana. Leo remembers Celia, and finds himself in even deeper… They met randomly at a movie theater. They had both gone alone to a Thursday midday screening of Michael Keaton’s comeback film and critical darling, Birdman. Celia was not at all […]
by Chris McCarthy We find our heroes looking for help with a fast growing problem… Captain Amanda Markley looks through the thick pane of blast-proof glass in the lunchroom door. Inside the room, it’s silent. For now. “What did you think the Magno in Magno-puppy meant?” Amanda asks. Winston looks over his captain’s shoulder […]
Jiaji Li has completed the design, fabrication and testing of his Oar-Driven Unmanned Surface Vehicle, better known as his Swimming Robot. The video below shows a rendering of the final design, testing of the coordination of the oars, which are driven in sets of three by two motors. And, finally, shows the robot swimming in […]
By Chris McCarthy From his perch in a luxury coffee shop, Leo spies on the man his ex-girlfriend left him for in search of answers, but when he just misses his chance to confront him, he finds himself face to face with a human trafficking victim and her captor and channels his toxic anger into […]
Please take a look at the videos demonstrating these Robot Walkers. Our study of minimal actuation for walking robots has lead to pairs of specialized leg mechanisms at each of four corners of the walker, eight in all. The robot is steerable with two separate drive motors, that is each side has four leg mechanisms connected […]
Jiaji Li has succeeded in building a prototype Robotic Rowboat. I have used 3D printing technology ever since it was introduced decades ago to build spatial mechanisms and routinely failed, which is why this is a particularly satisfying outcome. He convinced me to buy an inexpensive 3D printer and said he was sure PLA (poly […]
Students at BYU formed a study group advised by Prof. Denise Halverson to explore Kinematic Synthesis. They invited me to join them to discuss Quaterions and how they are used in Kinematics. I have not talked about this material in some time, so it was interesting pulling together the theory from many past talks, but […]
This Eight-Legged Walker with two stepper motor drives controlled using a Bluetooth interface developed by Ruiqi Mao for his 2023 UCInspire project builds on work by Chenhao Liu, Jiaji Li and Ken Nguyen, and my senior project team of Tom Nguyen, Jonathan Chavez, Connor Linklater and Jonathan Lu. Chenhao Liu was a 2022 UCInspire fellow […]
The Vehicle Performance Engineering Lab is clean and ready for the return of students in the coming weeks. This sequence of videos introduce 1. the vehicles in the lab, 2. a close up of Rogue, and 3. a close up of our EV Prototype. Introduction to the UCI Racecar Engineering Lab Here are our current […]