Project Posts

Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks

The Unitree Go2 Dog is an incredibly advanced robot with an impressive locomotion system. This project utilized the Genesis simulation platform to train policies for the robot using PPO (Proximal Policy Optimization) to accomplish various tasks such as strafing, running, jumping, and jumping over obstacles. This post is still under construction, check out our Final Presentation for more details Reward Function Design The reward function design was where the majority of the work was done to train the robot on different tasks. The Genesis platform offers an end-to-end example of a training script, environment, and evaluation script for teaching the robot to walk. The reward function for walking encouraged the dog to maintain a forward velocity while penalizing deviations from the body height target and from the initial joint points.

Wednesday, March 19, 2025 | 2 minutes Read

Open Source Delta Robot

An open source ROS package for controlling delta robots with position and velocity control. Configurable for adaptive forward and inverse kinematics. Trajectory generation and visualization examples are also offered. Designed for public use and easy integration with new delta robots as long as their configuration parameters are setup correctly. Robot Design and CAD are also available. Robot Kinematics The robot’s forward and inverse kinematics were first implemented in a jupyter notebook to visualize the robot’s configuration space and workspace.

Friday, March 14, 2025 | 12 minutes Read

Mobile Manipulation

This project incorporates several robotics concepts to perform a pick and place task in simulation using a mecanum-wheeled mobile robot with a 5 degree-of-freedom robot arm. Omnidirectional Mobile Base Kinematics (Mecanum Wheels) This robot uses mecanum wheels, which are omnidirectional wheels with 45-degree rollers that allow the robot to move in any direction without changing its orientation. When controlling the robot, we command the wheel velocities, which can be described by the following equation:

Thursday, December 12, 2024 | 7 minutes Read

ToastBot

Using a 7-DoF Franka Emika Panda Robot Arm, we developed a pick and place sequence using an Intel Realsense camera for identifying april tags. Robot Arm Control The Franka Emika Panda Robot Arm has a ROS package franka_ros which allows us to control the robot arm using the Moveit API. The Moveit API offers services and action servers to faciliate trajectory planning, end-effector operation, and motion profiling.

Thursday, December 12, 2024 | 2 minutes Read

Educational Robot Arm

An educational kit designed to teach the fundamentals of kinematics and dynamics. The kit is intended to accompany the course ME3460: Robot Dynamics & Control at Northeastern University. The kit is a physical representation of the final project, which is currently done purely through MATLAB simulation. Kit Design The robot is a 3-link planar manipulator with 3 degrees of freedom. The end effector is a simple gripper that can grab small objects.

Friday, April 12, 2024 | 3 minutes Read

Napkin.AI

A fast, lightweight graph retrieval-augmented generation tool for navigating codebases. Update: Winner of the Best Developer Tool sponsored by Warp Collaborated with: Rishi Iyer, Henry Bloom, Arnav Brahmasandra 💡 Inspiration As developers, we are always exploring new projects and open-source repositories. However, the complexity and scale of these codebases serve as a major barrier to entry even for the most experienced developers. Even after spending countless hours reading over files, documentations, and (hopefully solved) issues, it’s easy to find yourself lost and intimidated. We wanted to create a tool that would help developers navigate these codebases more effectively, answering questions and providing context on both specific and broad aspects of the codebase.

Sunday, February 4, 2024 | 8 minutes Read

Automated Poker Table (B-I-K-E)

The B-I-K-E (Best in Kard Entertainment) Poker Table is a capstone project for the Northeastern University Electrical and Computer Engineering program. Collaborated with: Connor Nelson Chris Swagler Tyler Passerine Adin Moses Jackson Heun Professor Canek Fuentes An automated system that creates a seamless home-game experience by automating the tedious and repetitive tasks that occur during a game of cards while lowering the barrier of entry of knowledge for complex games, focusing on Texas Hold ‘Em Poker as a proof of concept.

Tuesday, April 11, 2023 | 5 minutes Read

Chess Robot

This robot utilized stepper motors, a camera, sensors, and a gantry style system to interact with the chess board and play against a human opponent. System Hardware The robot’s frame was assembled using aluminum extrusion and 3D printed parts. 2 motors were used to drive the X-axis, and 1 motor was used to drive the Y-axis (horizontally). Timing belts were used to transfer the motion from the stepper motors to the gantry sliding on linear rails. Limit switches were placed at the end of each axis to home the robot and ensure every movement was accurate during gameplay.

Wednesday, June 8, 2022 | 3 minutes Read

Robotech

A graphical simulation of a swarm of robotic agents cleaning algal bloom in a lake utilizing path planning algorithms such as A* and RRT*. Submitted for the RoboTech 2022 Hackathon. The Problem Statement One of the most detrimental factors to the environment is the pollution and destruction to the oceans and all marine life. Aquatic habitats are incredibly beneficial for the sustainability of the planet since they act as massive carbon sinks and lower overall greenhouse gas emissions.

Thursday, April 21, 2022 | 4 minutes Read