I obtained a Bachelor’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering from McGill in April 2002 and I am now doing my Masters at the Ambulatory Robotics Lab of McGill's Center for Intelligent Machines.
I am presently working on AQUA: a six legged underwater robot. I have developed 3D numerical and graphical simulations of the robot. I have also designed an experimental setup, which I am using to test different legs. I will be developing the control algorithm that will allow the robot to follow a given trajectory underwater.

3D SIMULATION of AQUA
I implemented the six equations of motion governing the dynamics of the robot in 3D space to obtain the robot's position and orientation resulting from the legs' oscillations. The position and orientation of the robot are represented graphically using 3Ds max.

Simulation Videos:

turning (2.6 MB) and figure 8 (6.3 MB), down and up (2.5 MB).

I used to simulation along with a genetic algorithm to find the leg oscillation parameters that would allow the robot to reorient itself autonomously.

Simulation Videos:

autonomous reorientation (9.1 MB).

THRUST MEASURING SETUP
I designed an experimental setup that measures the forces and torques generated by one leg as it oscillates in the water. The setup allows to validate the rigid airfoil model that was used in the simulation and to test flexible legs, whose modeling would be too complex.

Video of Experiments:

preliminary experiments in a bucket (5.1 MB)