Mentis AI
Summer of 2025 I came up with the idea of Mentis AI, to develop a proof of concept device that provides low friction interaction with a personal AI assistant. Project was funded by Honors College and the professor whose lab I worked in. Currently, exploring the potential applications of the device, possibly in providing aid to vision impaired individuals. Project won a social entrepreneurship challenge with a cash prize.
Technical Summary
I designed the PCB, wrote the firmware, handsoldered all the tiny components and wrote a python server that runs 24/7 on an AWS EC2 instance, and a pairing mobile app that connects to the server. User wears the device on their ear, they press the button and speak. The microphone records and simultaneously streams the audio to the server in UDP packets. The server receives the bytes, and sends it to OpenAI API then receives the response and sends back the response to the device over TCP which plays the response on a transducer (functioning as a bone conducting speaker). Also the device is rechargeable via USB-C.
Check out my github for more details.
P.S. Not a single one of these things was taught in my coursework, I learned everything on my own :).
UXO detection Hexacopter
This is a custom built hexacopter drone that will detect unexploded ammunition in Ukrainian conflict zones. This project was being developed by 1 graduate student and 2 senior undergraduates. All of them graduated, now I am the sole person working on this project. I am responsible for getting the drone to fly and integrating the GPR sensor that will be provided by another lab. My goal is to finish this before summer 26 starts.
Flyover Drone
This is a flyover tricopter drone that will fly over a stadium on campus. Just like the project above, I inherited this one.
Height measurement
This is a notable project from my highschool. Inspired by a physics problem that one can know height from the time of drop, I built a 7ft electromechanical wooden contraption to measure a person's height. User stands on the platform, pulls a lever that presses a button and releases a string connected to a small wooden block. The arduino starts the countdown until objects reaches the ground, cuts a laser mesh and blocks the light beam going into photoresistor. Arduino then uses equations of motion to calculate height of fall i.e. height of the user, and displays on an LCD.
It didn't work perfectly but it was fun to build! (though I built another one that used sonar sensors and was much simpler, it worked fantastically. It was like a battery-powered height scale).
And many other tiny tiny projects.