For my final project in an Interactive Design course, I designed a set of relative navigation belts and build a prototype of the circuit using a microcontroller, a magnetometer, a gps, and LEDs. As described in the diagrams below, when functional, the belts would be able to discern the orientation of the wearer and would receive GPS coordinates from all other connected belts. Using this information, the belt would calculate the angle between the current orientation and second belt then blink the appropriate LED to indicate the relative direction.

The idea for this project came from an incident where I lost a friend in a large crowd and didn’t have cell service to be able to communicate. I wanted to design that would give me feedback about where they were without having to reach them directly. I wanted a system that would use relative body orientation to help navigate me and find a mobile target.  Project is still being developed

I also have experience working with microcontrollers, digital and analog sensors, LED’s, electric motors, and servo-motors. For my embedded electronics course at UVM, my teammates and I build a robot that used ultrasonic and color sensors to sweep an area to identify then avoid/remove various colored blocks. Once a block was identified correctly, we wrote a program for the robot to perform a 180 then use its rear scoop to pick up the block before exiting the area and leaving the block behind.