PigeonBot is a pigeon-inspired morphing wing aerial robot for studying feathered avian wing morphing. The robot underactuates 40 real feathers to change wing shape in flight. I was the lead developer of PigeonBot as part of my PhD at Stanford.

We published our work from PigeonBot in Science Robotics and Science in January 2020. A composite image I made of the wing was selected for the cover of Science Robotics’s special issue on bioinspired and biohybrid robots. This work has been featured on NPR, National Geographic, Scientific American, Popular Science, and The Colbert Report among others.

Stay tuned for updates on how we are expanding this work to avian tails and different bird species.

As part of a larger study on how birds can navigate lateral gusts with minimal visual information, I designed a wind tunnel study to measure the possibility of passive yaw stability in flapping wings. We used high speed motion capture to measure how flapping wings alone can passively stabilize sideslip in a variety of wind speed and turbulence conditions. We published a subset of this work in PNAS in 2018.

I was selected as a Creativity in Research Scholar in the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford (d.school) where I explored cost-effective ways for scientists to photograph their work for more impact. The aim of the project was to take away the stigma of needing fancy gear to take a great photo. Using inexpensive light panels and clip-on lenses, I made all the photos on this page using my iPhone 7.

The Strandbeest Klok is meant to encapsulate the fluidity of Theo Jansen’s Strandbeest in a useful clock. In a similar way that the original Strandbeests continually roam the beaches of the Netherlands, the Strandbeest Klok continually cycles once per minute to keep time.

The clock face is CNC milled aluminum. The linkage mechanism pieces are CNC milled brass. The clock hands and crank arm are laser cut acrylic. An off the shelf clock movement and stepper motor power actuate the Strandbeest Klok.

Strandbeest Klok was designed and made in Stanford’s Computer-Aided Product Creation class (ME318), Autumn 2016

Minigrips connect coffee stirrer straws together as a versatile building toy. Through multiple injection mold, material, and injection shot recipe iterations, I arrived at the final design shown made from a flexible Dynaflex G2701 material with levers to assist in gripper opening and an intentional bend point for different construction angles.

The final mold was a 16-cavity mold with a cycle time of 2.8 seconds per part. I produced a total of 1500 final parts.

Minigrips were designed and made in Stanford’s Making Multiples: Injection Molding class (ME325), Spring 2017 and were featured in The Stanford Daily. Minigrips went on to be used in outreach activities for the Stanford Product Realization Lab.

This bottle opener was inspired by the Emerald City in the Wizard of Oz. Modeled after a pair of eyeglasses, one eyepiece opens typical bottle caps and the other opens twist-off caps. The frame was CNC machined 303 stainless steel.

The opener was designed and made in Stanford’s Computer-Aided Product Creation class (ME318), Autumn 2016

I was the president and program manager of Arizona State University’s AIAA Design Build Fly (DBF) team for the 2014-2015 academic year. I oversaw flight sciences, structures, propulsion, finances, and outreach teams and led the team to compete at the AIAA DBF 2015 flyoff in Tucson, AZ.

I 3D printed a scale model of our competition airplane to decorate my mortarboard at graduation and was awarded as a winner of the mortarboard contest.

Photos by Dr. Timothy Takahashi.

I was the structures lead for Arizona State University’s AIAA Design Build Fly (DBF) team for the 2013-2014 season. At the 2014 AIAA DBF flyoff in Wichita, KS, our team placed 17th out of 100 teams. Our team was awarded Outstanding Student Organization in ASU’s schools of engineering.

I designed the all-moving elevator and rudder for this airplane along with overseeing the remaining structural design and build. The airplane had a balsa box spar and a welded aluminum keel and landing gear for maximum payload volume.

My Bot Totoro was designed and built for Stanford’s Introduction to Mechatronics (ME210) course. The objective was to autonomously navigate a field to deposit game pieces into scoring bins. While there was a robot size limitation at the start of the match, we designed a robot that would passively ‘grow’ so that it could more or less play the game parked in one spot.

I designed and built the passive chute release mechanism on the robot. Our team won the class competition out of 26 teams.

For more info, check out the robot website