Rack and Pinion With Powered Wheels

I've built many cars that use a rack and pinion system and many with differentials, but this was the first time I combined them into one.  As you'll see in the video, the car had front wheels that can steer and are powered through a differential.  The system is very effective since it allows the car to have a four wheel drive rather than just a rear wheel drive.

Swerve Drive

After going to the FRC (First Robotics Competition) Championships, I got to see a few other successful robot designs and the drive trains that teams used.  One of these was the swerve drive, which I thought was particularly interesting because of the maneuverability that it provided.  Today I attempted to build my own swerve drive out of LEGO.  After some experimenting, I got it to work, and I fine tuned it to make it more effective.  

Here is a clip of the robot driving around.  (I'm still working on driving it well)

Robotics Championships

My robotics team, MVRT 115 attended the First Robotics Competition world championships in St. Louis this year!  Our team was in the Archimedes division and we had many strong performances, but a few unfortunate robot and code issues lowered our average too much to recover from.  It was still a ton of fun and I hope out team goes again next year.  Unfortunately my camera isn't great, but here are some photos of the event.

Future Engineers Summer Camp 2015

A few friends and I are running a summer camp this summer.  It's open to students entering grades 5-8 during the 2015-2016 school year, and everyone in the right age group is welcome to attend, despite their ability levels.  It's a one week camp that runs from 9:00 A.M. until 3:00 P.M. at the Little Champs Learning Center in San Jose.  Each day we teach a new real world engineering concept with LEGO Power Functions and LEGO Technic Pieces, giving students an opportunity to learn all while having tons of fun building with LEGO.  This is our second annual year running camp, since our first year was a huge success and we wanted to continue teaching others about our passion.  New this year, we're adding a junior and advanced class so we can accept a wider range of students.  We're still accepting sign-ups so it would be great if you could spread the word!  You can learn more at our website at: https://futureengineerscamp.com/

Double Differential

I've enjoyed using differentials in all the vehicles I make out of lego, so I wondered what would happen if I used two differentials and a third wheel.  Surprisingly, it worked really well!
This is what it looked like:

And this is how it drove: