Context: This project was the last challenge in UC Berkeley’s Makers Launchpad summer program at the Jacob’s school of design. It put together what I had learned in fabrication and physical computing those past 6 weeks.

Description: ‘Pivot’ is a self-steering bluetooth vehicle whose body rotates horizontally across its centre axis to help guide the direction of the vehicle as it turns. The vehicle can cross obstacles, varied terrain, and incline slopes.

Objective: How can I improve the agility of small vehicles to maneuver in routes more accurately?”

Key learning: It pays off to understand the mechanics behind a working prototype. This way future iterations do not overlook the details which made it work in the first place. In this case, weight distribution around the pivot was crucial to steering the body.