These Electrical Engineering Students Created a Award-Winning Multifunctional Cat That Enhances Smart Home Technology!
Meet our Electrical Engineering Capstone Group: Jason, Aaron, Erika, and Vanessa,
Why did you build a “Multifunctional Cat”?
The purpose of our project was to design a household pet that enhances smart home technology. So integrating different things, like being able to walk and being able to perform different tricks that people of any ages could be able to play with. So our inspiration was just to design a cat that was easy to use.
The whole principle is that it can move around, it can talk and, effectively just be able to move around your house as it would a traditional pet. It does the whole personality part and it kind of gives it a life of its own. So it's like a smart home application.
We also thought it would be a more challenging project, as opposed to the other options that were listed. Not only does this project require one aspect of software or hardware, but also needed the mechanical part that isn't so traditional in the electrical engineering program. It was a good way to mix all of our talents together and to make use of our skill sets.
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Explain to us your multifunctional robot cat and app.
It's a multi-functional robotic cat. Emphasis on the word multi-functional. It does a multitude of different things. One of which is the traditional things like walking forward or backwards, sideways. All things with regards to actual movements, other little playful things like sitting down, and raising a paw. The other things are the other software and features that we added to it as well. We have put ChatGPT into it, we made an entire app for it, we added smell detection, collision avoidance, all those sensors and software that's all built upon it. This is what encapsulates the whole multi-functional part of it being beyond just being a robotic cat that moves.
We also gave it a personality. In the ChatGPT part, we had all the prompt engineering side of things so it can talk with its own personality, give it its own life beyond just existing as a movement.
What made you choose a cat design?
Our whole purpose of creating a cat is that its friendly looking and very cute. So for kids, they’ll want to interact with it more. And cats can do a lot of different tricks. That's why we integrated the walking, sitting and smell detection, which is something cats are known for.
What were the trial and errors throughout this project?
We had trial and error in designing the legs. So we actually did three iterations of the leg, and then tested it to see if it was able to bend in a certain way that would allow it to walk. There were also trials in terms of the electrical components of the Cat. Our initial design did not have enough power to deliver to the servos to make it stand up. We had to come up with a new design, and we originally wanted to go with the battery, but again, due to the weight limitations of the Cat, we could not do that, so we ended up using a AC to DC converter.
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What courses throughout your undergrad helped you prepare for this project?
The course that helped me most was ELE 202, the Introductory to Electrical Circuits course. It was the basis of everything that we do within electrical engineering. No matter which stream of electrical engineering you go into, you need some knowledge from there. Especially with this project, you're dealing with distributing power and soldering, these are all skills that you can learn from ELE 202.
Also, one of the most useful course for the scope of this project would definitely be COE 528 Object Oriented Eng Analysis and Design. The main takeaway from it being knowing how to visualize UML diagrams to illustrate how the software of the projects worked from a different perspective, from a more design point of view as opposed to just the actual programming part.
Another useful course was ELE 754 Power Electronics. This fourth year course really helped in learning how to utilize converters such as a buck or boost converter to change the power levels, which was used in the design of the cat.
What advice would you give to first-year engineering students?
- My word of advice would be, always take other opportunities outside of the classroom to learn things. Traditionally with electrical, you would assume more to be on the hardware side of things. But throughout undergrad, I was always very involved in the hackathon world of our university. I used to be the co-chair for the school's hackathon for a little while. And I did a lot of things in that software community, which is what led me to where I am today and how I know significantly more outside of the classroom with respect to software, especially outside of the traditional electrical engineering program as well. Do things outside the classroom. You cannot just do everything from the school and think that's sufficient.
- Pursue a minor in computer science, or at the very least to learn some coding skills. This is very helpful within the industry, as a lot of electrical engineers within the industry don't specialize in that. It can help you automate a lot of your tasks and help you make your processes more efficient, and it's very helpful.
- Another advice is definitely to take previous resources provided by the university. So being involved in things such as research positions as well as different extra extracurriculars that can allow you to gain more experience outside of the classroom.
Congratulations on your graduation from TMU Engineering!
