iRobot 2023

iRobot Corporation

Mechanical Engineering Co-Op, Bedford MA, July 2023 – Dec 2023

The iRobot Corporation is a leader in designing and developing consumer robots. These include a range of autonomous home vacuum cleaners (Roomba), floor moppers (Braava), and other autonomous cleaning devices.

I took on a lot of roles this time around at iRobot. It was my goal to work on as many projects as possible, meet as many new people as I could, and gain new responsibilities when it came to tasks given to me. During my performance review, I was told that full-time engineers wanted me to join iRobot indefinitely because they were already treating me as an entry-level engineer. Some feedback I got from my performance review that still resonates with me is, "he is only held back by his title of 'intern'". Unfortunately, at the time of writing this, Amazon is in talks to acquire iRobot which has led to a hiring freeze.

New Home Ecosystem Robot

Front End Innovation Team: Traction investigation

Developed in-depth understanding of Terramechanics; the study of interactions between different types of terrain and a vehicle
Designed and prototyped new tread designs which improved robot traction by 20%
- Based on optimal tractive design factors such as robot slippage considerations, contact surface area, ground pressure, tread material properties, and so on
Designed and conducted Drawbar Pull tests for the robot
- gives a parameter for max traction from the robot/tread designs thrust-to-weight ratio
Tested various TPE tread shores to find optimal material for designs
Began a conversation with tooling engineers in APAC for mudtool designs to continue tread testing with close-to-production materials
- Got design for manufacturing (DFM) feedback for tread molding

Drawbar Pull Test Setup: Spring is to dampen and absorb any noise

Designed intricate, multi-part molds for in-house silicon seal designs

Molds fit with various inserts, vents, pry-slots, and screw-tightening locations (top pic)
Part is for a water-tight seal so this mold uses fast-curing 2-part silicon putty as material
Notice that the top left corner has an offset alignment geometry which ensures there is only ONE way to be aligned
Made 4 different multi-part molds and produced numerous silicon seal prototypes for robot prototype testing (bottom pic)

2-part mold in CREO

Collection of my molds and molded parts

Electromechanical Design - Developed skills in the standards of O-ring seal design

(as per design standards here)

Designed and produced a water-tight housing prototype that protects important electrical components (right)
Camera components needed to be outside the housing but electrical components needed to be safe inside the housing
O-ring groove seal design for face seals (back) and compression seals (front). The compression seal goes around the camera lense bezel
Tapering alignment feature on the backplate (yellow) to secure accurate electrical component positioning

2-part housing with o-ring grooves and seal design for standard (front red) and custom (back red) o-rings.

SLS 3D printed x10 of these to destribute across iRobot locations for further robot testing

Robot Debug Assemblies for EEs

Built and supported numerous electrical debug assemblies for the electrical engineers
These assemblies include cable harnesses for each electrical system within a robot
Also designed and produced mounting fixtures for these assemblies for each electrical component and mechanical mechanism
The assembly layout I developed was sent and used in APAC on one of the manufacturer's factory floors. This helped them with referencing all components

Other mechanical design work on top-secret robot

Developed mounting prototype fixtures for next-generation navigational components
Collaborated with Electrical and Software engineers on designing and prototyping new mechanical safety component
Developed skills in design standards such as snap-fits, PCBA interface frames, tolerance stacks
Assembly and bring IP of 10+ prototype robots

Dock Team

Developed new mechanical component designs to better maintain dock cleanliness
Designs were successful in testing and recommended to higher-level engineers for implementation

Software Team

Created a mount to help the software team better understand wet robot leakage
Learned how to use internal software to control and monitor robotic function

Intern Challenges

iRobot ensures their interns are given respect and challenges as we develop into professional engineers. One way they do this is by holding the Intern Challenges, which are aimed to give an interdisciplinary intern team a task to develop, design, and prototype a solution to the task over the internship.

iPlant - A dock self-watering planter lifestyle attachment

As dock technology advances, the docks only become larger and can be seen as 'clunky' and 'in the way'
Our teams' goal was to turn the evac dock into a functional piece of room decor and present it as a lifestyle product through a self-watering planter attachment on top of the dock
In CREO, I designed ME features such as planting space, tank handle, and installation method
I also helped design and fabricate our cardboard prototype, along side the ID intern, Bryce
The system is controlled by an Arduino Nano ESP32, Roomba J7 Combo water pumps, water level sensor & moisture sensor, relay board for pump control, 5V regulator for conversion from 12V supply.

This was a big project so follow this link for in-depth documentation

ID render of product

Me presenting with cardboard prototype

Robotic Ball Collector - Team Chompions

Collect as many ball-pit balls use an iRobot Create 3
I designed a full asm in CREO using top-down skeleton modeling skills
The design incorporates:
- A front spinner that has fins to collect balls
- A ramp in which the balls travel up as they are being collected
- A 'collection bin' that guides the balls down and towards the back with a 3 degree decline from where top of the ramp is
- A 'backdoor' that swings open once the bin is full. All the balls exit due to gravity from the decline of the ramp
Our robot CRUSHED the competition by collecting a total of 400+ balls to a mere 100.... sorry other team

This was a big project and will be more in-depth documented here

Chompions Commercial v2 (1).mp4

Commercial for THE CHOMPER