Sergiy's Portfolio

The Build - This robot was designed entirely on paper before it was built. Center of mass calculations were made on the launcher in order to place the center of mass right on the pivot, this way the servos would struggle less to set the tilt.

The design of the robot took two 10 hour days to complete. After this I had a list of parts that I needed to make, and then assemble. This was the first time I have ever fully designed a robot on paper before starting to build it and I am very happy to say that all of the parts came together like legos.

Overall, I had 10 days to build this robot, from sitting down with a blank notepad to presenting it to my Physics class as a final project. It took over 100 hours to deisgn and build, and this was crammed in with my last ever week in High School. Unfortunately I only got one hour of sleep before the day of the Senior Countdown, but a successful project was definately worth it.

Deferred – This song is an original composition which I was inspired to write upon the arrival of my WPI early admission decision letter. All of the parts, including bass and all guitars, were recorded by myself. The drums were generated by Guitar Pro software. The background was written and prepared with the help of Audacity Sound engineering software and the solos were recorded as they were being improvised.

Anybody There – This song was written by Richie Blackmore from Rainbow. It was done in the exactly same fashion as Black Star, with Guitar Pro background and a recording of my playing on top of that.

Pink Panther – This song was written by Henry Mancini and was actually the song which inspired me to pick up and learn the saxophone starting in the fifth grade. The background was a prepared by the company which transcribed the sheet music for this song.

Remote Control Car Project
(To see full size images, click on the thumbnails below.)

The Origin - When I had jsut come to America, one of the first New Year's presents that I got was an RC car from radioshack. For an 11 year old like myself this was just about the best gift possible. After several years of crashing this car, driving it off of rooftops and countless jumps, I decided that it was too slow. To change this, in 8th grade I decided to completely strip the car of all of it's internals, and give it a new electronics system, a new turning system, and most importantly a new motor.

 

The Re-Build - The process started by learning as much as I could about electric motors, wireless recievers and transmitters, and all of the other components that go into making a RC car. After extensive research, I ordered all of the parts that were needed, including a new controller, new steering servo, new reciever and remote, and a new motor. The only part of the RC car left over was the plastic body with the wheels. This is where the easy part ended and the hard part began. As I later found out is always the case with engineering, nothing goes the way you want it to. Since this was a RC car from radioshack, it's body was not designed for re-building, unlike most hobby RC car frames. Therefore, the motor did not fit into the transmission bay, there was no room for the controller, no room for the reciever, and the steering servo did not fit either. In order to make them fit it took days of work, of re-melting some of the plastic on the body to accomodate the parts. The car was then oiled, and immediately tested.

 

The Product - The car turned out to be much more of a beast than even I expected. Most of this was due to the low-turn motor that I decided to use. A low-turn motor has less torque, but much more speed in terms of RPM, and since the car weighs next to nothing, this was a perfect choice. This car was almost un-controllable, it would spin its tires endlessly if you went anywhere next to the throttle, and that made it so much fun.

   

The Speed - This car ended up racing against two real cars, my old Hyundai Elantra, and my friends Honda Civic. First we decided jsut to see how fast it could go, and we clocked the car at almost 60MPH! Afterward we decided to race the RC car against the real car, on a circuit that was about 400m in length and 100m in width. The acceleration of my RC car was so instantaneous, that even though the real car would start catching up when it would get closer to 60, another turn came, and the RC car was in a huge lead again.



The Damage - Throughout this RC cars life it was abused, thrown off of buildings, set on fire, and it was even run over by a real car during the race described above. However for 7 long years it worked without problems, until finally, just a few months ago the transmission started giving out. I assembled the car one last time before its transmission finally disentigrated, to capture on video what it could do. Sadly the performance is nowhere near what it used to be, and at the end of the video the transmission gave out completely, but it still gives a taste of what it was like.