Nishk Shah (12), inspired by Tony Stark’s legendary technology in Iron Man, invented a voice-controlled robotic arm.
“I’ve always wanted to make something similar to the robotic arm in Iron Man, the little three finger robot that follows him around and helps him,” Shah said. “I look up to Tony Stark when it comes to engineering because of his cool technology. I’ve wanted to make this since freshman year, I just didn’t know where to start. After I got the chance to, I was really excited and it all started coming together.”
After attending a camp hosted by Westview alumni, Aug. 9-11, Shah received an opportunity to create a project involving robotics and computer programming while learning new programming skills. The camp combined his interest in AI and robotics, as well as new skills like CAD.
“We designed something that we wanted to build, then the mentors taught us how to code it and wire it so that it works,” Shah said. “We were essentially integrating AI and machine learning into a physical product.”
Shah said he really enjoyed developing the problem-solving skills needed to complete the project, because there were no instructions; he was inventing his own 3d printed machine.
“The process consisted of a lot of research on how it’s possible to create the arm,” Shah said. “I was going online to figure out, ‘How can I make this work?’ Or, ‘How can I make the robot understand what I’m trying to say?’ I got to experiment a lot with a lot of different things. When I was printing, there were several times when as I was assembling little pieces and screwing them in, I realized they wouldn’t fit or the sizing was off. Going through that whole repetitive process was fun.”
According to Shah, the workshop was helpful in the creation of his robotic arm because he was able to learn new skills with language processing and computer-aided design.
“I didn’t know how to CAD that well, so the camp helped me learn,” Shah said. “One of the mentors showed me what I could incorporate, for example, a natural language processing model to make it voice-commanded. It’s a little complex, but I used a model that’s pre-trained to understand what you’re saying, converting what you’re saying into actions.”
Shah said that he enjoys the lack of constraints and creative freedom that he experienced when inventing and coding something on his own.
“Robotics is directed towards an objective, because we’re competing in a game, so it’s more tailored towards the game,” he said. “This was more of a creative project to explore a lot of new things. There are constraints in robotics, like a certain library you have to use, but with my project, I could make and use anything I wanted, which is what I enjoyed.”
Shah is excited for what he could potentially expand on with the robotic arm in the future.
“I’ve been wanting to make something like this for a while to see what I could do outside of the constraints of robotics, and I just haven’t had the resources or the mentorship or the time to do all of that, so that was one of the biggest reasons I was able to,” Shah said. “Once I get my own workspace I could make an arm with computer vision involved too. I think it could be really cool if this could actually help a lot of people someday. It’s small now, but it could be expanded in the future.”
