Qichen Wang

The Professor is the TSJ Foundation's first interactive educational robot, built for STEM outreach. Qichen joined a project already in progress and redesigned the body plan to add two working arms.

• 10servos integrated
• 5DOF per arm
• 3coordinated motions
• 50Maestro sequence frames

What I built

• Installed both arms, including the arm-to-shoulder gear train and servo connections.
• Built a chest foundation that secures the shoulder servos, gears and chassis to the main body.
• Integrated 10 servos across the chest and arm assemblies, with 5 degrees of freedom per arm.
• Programmed 3 motions in Pololu Maestro Control Center by tuning servo position, speed and acceleration across 50 sequence frames.

The three motions

• Hug. Raises both arms and bends the elbows into a hug.
• Point the way. Raises the arms, turns them sideways and points in a direction.
• Wave. Raises an arm, bends the elbow and turns it side to side.

Credits

• The body shell, head and waist components, and the initial arm CAD, came from the team before me. I reworked their plan so the body could carry arms, then built and programmed them.

• Pololu Maestro
• ESP32
• Servo control
• Gear & linkage assembly
• Wiring & power

A transradial (below-elbow) prosthesis prototype designed in Autodesk Inventor, with a gripper and wrist rotation.

• 2degrees of freedom
• 0.6 kgload lifted

What I built

• Designed a two-degree-of-freedom prosthesis for gripping and wrist rotation in Autodesk Inventor.
• Printed and iterated several gripper versions (yellow and blue parts in the photos).
• Demonstrated the prototype lifting a 0.6 kg load and measured its power consumption.

• Autodesk Inventor
• 3D printing
• Servo actuation
• Power measurement

A gas detector worn on the hand. The electronics were prototyped on a breadboard with an Arduino, then moved into a 3D-printed enclosure mounted on a glove, with an 8×8 LED matrix for the readout.

• Arduino
• Breadboarding
• 8×8 LED matrix
• 3D printing
• Soldering

A desk gadget built around an ESP32 board, combining an OLED screen, a 4-digit 7-segment display, a sensor module and joystick input on a 3D-printed stand.

• ESP32
• OLED display
• 7-segment display
• Joystick input
• 3D printing

Three desktop PCs, from parts selection to first boot, including UEFI and Secure Boot configuration.

• 3systems built

• Component selection
• Cable management
• UEFI / Secure Boot setup

A laser-cut wooden coffin with an Arduino and several micro servos inside driving a moving mechanism, finished with paint and a battery pack.

• Arduino
• Micro servos
• Laser cutting
• Battery power

A two-level model house built on a wooden frame, with wiring routed through the structure to a breadboard and Arduino controller.

• Wood framing
• Wiring
• Breadboarding
• Arduino

A maze-navigation robot designed in Inventor and AutoCAD, with a laser-cut chassis, breadboard circuits and servo-driven wheels. Control routines are written in C++ in the Arduino IDE.

• Arduino Uno
• C++ (Arduino IDE)
• Inventor / AutoCAD
• Laser cutting
• Servo drive