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Architected Re-Entry Capsule Firmware
Space Systems Lab supporting Kentucky Re-Entry Universal Payload System (KRUPS), University of Kentucky For the 2024-2025 school year the KRUPS project had two missions coming up. There was interest in updating the hardware from ATSAMD21 Cortex M0 and ATSAMD51 Cortex M4 due to needing more processing power. We switch to an ESP32-S3. This resulted in needing to manually port the firmware over and I used this opportunity to rearchitect the backend.
The new firmware was designed to be flexible to enable a single firmware for multiple different hardware applications. For one of the missions we had the KRUPS Capsule, FemptoSats (small reentry devices used for technology demonstration), a downlink on the sounding rocket, and potentially a downlink on the ground. My goal was to use a configuration file when I compile the firmware to set up the firmware for each device as outside of the ESP32 each device had different set of sensors. Based off of previous version, the firmware is built on a real time operating system (freeRTOS). After initialization there are four types of tasks. A sensor bus which communicates with the sensors or radios based on a queue. The queue is loaded by timer tasks for each sensor dictating the pulling rate of the sensor and packet build task when a packet is ready to be transmitted. The packet built tasks take the sensor data and prepare it to be transmitted. Since we are generating more data than can be transmitted these tasks would select data points to be sent. Deployment task trigger a parachute deployment to slow the capsule down based on the altitude and velocity. The last task managed the a publish and subscribe model to pass the information between tasks. The configuration of what sensors were located at what addresses was to be handled by the configuration file. |
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Interned at Los Alamos National Labs working in the Automation, Robotics, and Controls (E-3) group. My primary project was working on the Automation in Material Inspection and Handling where with a team of two other interns we integrated a Clearpath Ridgeback Mobile Platform robot with a Universal Robotics UR5 robotic arm. Then we developed a material handling and inspection demonstration to show capabilities.
I was in charge of electrical integration and modifying the UR5's control box to be powered off of a battery tap from the Ridgeback's battery. Additionally, I integrated the safety between the two robots with a wireless emergency stop. I also developed a computer vision pipeline to classify spheres based on damage. That model used a AI model (RESNET-18) and transfer learning to retrain it for our spheres. This work has been publicly released under a Los Alamos National Lab unlimited release: LA-UR-24-28431 Automation, Robotics, and Controls (E-3) website:
https://organizations.lanl.gov/weapons-engineering/engineering-technology-and-design/process-automation-and-control/ |
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Performance Analysis of Heterogeneous Networks for Robotic Navigation
NSF-REU Undergraduate Researcher, Mobile Pervasive & Sensor Computing Lab, University of Maryland Baltimore County Participated in a NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates at the Mobile Pervasive and Sensor Computing Lab, where I work on two projects. I primarily worked on a project demonstrated the feasibility of LoRa for transmitting large data (images) for robotic navigation, potentially expanding its applications in critical environments. Secondly, I deployed and bench marked Modal AI Sentinel (UAV).
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SpaceLex - Rover
Electonic Layout and design SpaceLex is a student club at the University of Kentucky that was competing in the Friends of Rocketry Competition. While I am apart of the Electronics subteam I also assisted the Payload subteam in the electronics design of their autonomous rover RIQ. The drawing of RIQ is by the Payload subteam lead Lucas Stevenson.
RIQ's mission is to deploy on the landing of the rocket in a sandy location and return to the designated point. As a part of RIQ's mission we have to transmit both GPS location and a live video. We are doing this through using a 5.8 Ghz 1 watt transmitter and we are embedding the GPS location in the audio channel. SpaceLex's website:
https://spacelex.engr.uky.edu/ |
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SpaceLex - Avionics
Wireless Data - RF design and implementation SpaceLex is a student club at the University of Kentucky that was competing in NASA Student Launch liftoff division. I am on the electronics subteam as the principal RF designer. This project is ongoing. I have include the two wiring schematics for avionics and payload circuitry courtesy of the electronics subteam lead Paul Breeding. In the interim we have switched to compete in the Friends of Rocketry Competition. The images and explanation text are about the old design for the NASA Student Launch competition.
For the payload we needed to receive commands on the 2 meter amatuer band (144 - 148 Mhz) using Automatic Packet Reporting System protocol. To do this we are using the DRA818V to translate the radio signal to an electrical signal for the Rasperry Pi Pico to decode. For the avionics we need to transmit the GPS location of the rocket so we know where it is in order to recover it. I decided on using the LoRa on the 900 Mhz band because of the small packet size and long range. SpaceLex's website:
https://spacelex.engr.uky.edu/ |
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