Welcome to MechCollab
A Blog About Mechanical Engineering Projects & Community Love
About Me
Hi, I'm Siya, a high school senior with a strong passion for mechanical engineering, especially in automation and human-robot interaction. These fields allow me to combine my love for building, precision, and making a tangible impact on my community. I've always been drawn to creating machines that solve everyday problems, like designing miniature solar panels to power a fan during a heatwave or building a battery-powered robotic vacuum for my dad's desk. My family-oriented values also shape how I approach teamwork, with love and empathy guiding how I connect with others. Outside of engineering, I enjoy creative writing, dancing (both Indian classical and hip hop), baking, and doing pottery. In the future, I hope to continue making a difference in the community through my work in mechanical engineering!
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Education:
School: Irvington High School Favorite Subject: Math
Mission:
Build a community of like-minded people dedicated to utilizing their specialties to give back to society and build connections
Honors & Awards
DECA International Career Development Conference
2nd at International Career development Conference of 200k+ members for Hospitality and Tourism Operations Research
DECA state career development conference
2nd place (2023), 3rd place (2024) out of 5k+ members
President's Circle Award-- Borgen Project
Mobilized 300+ people to call congress directly , 1000+ to email, & 2000+ to advocate
National Honors Society
Participant
SVUDL Invitational Debate Tournmament
2nd place speaker award out of 100+ competitors and 3rd place team overall
AP Scholar
with Honor Award
average score of at least 3.25 on all AP Exams taken, and scores of 3 or higher on four or more exams
Extracurriculars
COSMOS summer program
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Built a Raspberry PI using Python at UC San Diego
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Programmed and built walking robot, windmill, and color-detection navigation using PiCam and OpenCV
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Designed, laser-cut, and 3D-printed shape-detecting, autonomous drawing robotic arm
Nanosensor Research Paper
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Wrote a 4000+ word research paper on implementing nanosensors to reduce bias in facial recognition technology
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Published in Journal of Student Research
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Worked with Dr. Kristina Lilova, Research Assistant Professor at Arizona State University, and Professor Virgel Torremocha at the university of South Eastern Philippians
Author of My Grandmother's Diaries
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Authored and published a biography about my grandmother’s life
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Sold 20+ copies
Founder of My Veiled Chronicles
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Programmed My Veiled Chronicles website from scratch, utilizing databases, HTML, CSS, JavaScript and NLP (AI for tone moderation)
Irvington Coding Tomorrow Initiative- Vice President
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Developed and taught advanced Python and cybersecurity curriculum
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Managed club funds
Borgen Project--Nonprofit Leadership Intern
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Advocated for anti poverty bill reauthorization through congressional engagement and meetings
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Spearheaded fundraising campaign to raised $650+
Borgen Project--Director of Regional Programs
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Won president's circle award for convincing 300+ people to lobby on anti poverty legislation
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Spoke to 1000+ people on anti-poverty legislation
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Led workshops focused on solving poverty related issues through STEM solutions
H2GP Girls in STEM
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Collaborated with a team to engineer and program a hydrogen-powered robotic car for H2 Grand Prix racing competition
Inspirit AI
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Collaborated with Harvard/MIT students to develop a Python program with advanced AI components for exoplanet detection in complex datasets
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Conducted analysis to identify the optimal machine learning model with 99.5% accuracy and presented finding
Fremont Debate Academy-- Director of Regional Programs
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Established global partnerships with school boards to introduce debate programs
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Implemented programs at institutions like Little Rock Central, Stamford, and Washington
Blog
Project Background/ Objective:
This project involves a robot equipped with two arms, each controlled by a]one servo, allowing movement in the XY plane. The primary goal is to enable the robot to draw shapes or patterns based on user-provided coordinates, ensuring smooth transitions between points. The robot interprets the coordinates and moves its arms accordingly to create the desired drawing.
Components of Our Machine
1
Control + Automation
Our robot moves to specific coordinates using inverse kinematics, a mathematical technique that determines the joint angles needed for its arms to reach the desired location. By inputting the coordinates, the robot calculates the precise movements required for each joint, enabling smooth and accurate positioning. This ensures that the robot can autonomously navigate to the specified points with high precision, adapting its movements in real-time to account for any changes in its environment.
To determine which shape the robot should replicate, we assign different shapes to specific buttons on the gamepad. When a button is pressed, the robot will recreate the corresponding shape.
2
Electronics
The Raspberry Pi serves as the central processing unit, running the code that manages image capture, processing, and servo control. Attached to the Raspberry Pi is the PiCamera, which captures high-definition video frames in real-time. These frames are processed using OpenCV to detect shapes by converting images to grayscale, applying Gaussian blur, thresholding to create binary images, and finding contours.
Servo motors, controlled via the Raspberry Pi's GPIO pins, move to specific angles based on the number of detected contours, providing a physical response to the image processing results. The gpiozero library simplifies servo control, while numpy handles image data as arrays.
Together, these components and libraries enable the Raspberry Pi to capture and process images, detect shapes, and control servo movements dynamically, demonstrating a practical application of computer vision and hardware control.
3
Programming
Programming was used to tell the servos what angles and how they should move when presented an image. This included applying a threshold and finding contours to outline the shape of an image the piCamera captures, and applying a Gaussian blur to reduce noise and detail. The code utilizes the picamera library to interface with the PiCamera, capturing continuous frames in real-time. Each frame is processed using OpenCV to convert the image to grayscale, apply Gaussian blur, and threshold the image to create a binary image. Contours are detected in the binary image using cv2.findContours, and these contours are drawn on the original image to visualize the detected shapes.
The code also integrates servo control using the gpiozero library, which allows for simple and effective control of GPIO pins on the Raspberry Pi.
Our Process
Final Poster
1. Initially designed our robotic arm with three servos, but later optimized it to use only two servos.
2. Used OnShape to assemble the parts, employing revolution and planar fits to ensure proper attachment.
3. Laser cut parts in 0.25 inch acrylic and assembled the physical parts of the robotic arm.
4. Applied inverse kinematics to determine the angles the servos need to move to in order to reach specific user-defined coordinates.
5. Translated this functionality into code, debugging to resolve potential errors such as calculations exceeding the 180-degree servo range.
Impact
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Educational Demonstration: Shows how robotic arms can be programmed to perform precise movements, useful for teaching robotics and automation concepts.
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Understanding Geometry: Helps in understanding geometric shapes and their properties through practical demonstrations.
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Engagement in STEM: Sparks interest in STEM fields by providing a tangible example of how programming can control physical objects.
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Foundation for Advanced Projects: Serves as a basic platform that can be expanded upon for more complex tasks, providing a foundation for learning and experimentation.
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Illustrates Basic Robotics Concepts: Demonstrates fundamental principles such as coordinate systems, angles, and motion control.
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Interactive Learning Tool: Acts as a hands-on tool for learning about robotics and engineering, making abstract concepts more accessible.
Future Applications
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Enhanced Drawing Capabilities: Improvement to draw more complex and intricate shapes or patterns, including curves and 3D shapes.
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Artistic Projects: Integration with design software to create robotic art, allowing artists to program specific patterns or images.
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Precision Drawing: Application in fields requiring precise drawing capabilities, such as architectural design and technical drawing.
My Passion Project:
A global website where individuals can share their stories in an interactive and supportive community. The idea to create this was sparked my the biography I wrote about my grandma, inspiring me to want to provide others the same opportunity to share their struggles and find their community. As a result I founded my vieled chronicles, a website where diverse people can share stories about themselves, family memebers or even freinds and get advice from others who ma have gone through similar situations.
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Project Collage
Future Plans:
I plan to pursue a masters degree in mechanical engineering with a focus on automation and human-robot interaction. In addition, I aim to minor in business to blend both of my passions seamlessly. My ultimate goal is to establish a startup that delivers modular, scalable engineering solutions tailored to diverse community needs, such as disaster relief, urban development, and local manufacturing. By developing customizable, easily deployable systems, I hope to address various challenges and make a meaningful impact in multiple sectors