Vivian Zhou

Hello!

I'm Vivian Zhou.

Mechanical Engineering Graduate Student | Aspiring Mechatronic Systems Engineer

Who I Am

I'm a second year Master's Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering student. I studied Mechanical Engineering in undergrad at UC Davis and also minored in Computer Science. My engineering interests include mechanical design, control systems, and robotics.
To the right, you will find my extracurriculars and hobbies.

I love exploring and learning new things. I think that's what makes me love engineering. One of my hobbies is hiking as it's a great destressor and always a fun way to explore new places! Seen above I am trying my best not to fall in the river, where the ice cold Icelandic waters await.

I am part of the only co-ed engineering fraternity on the UC Davis campus. They are my home away from home and have pushed me to greater heights both personally and professionally. I continue to give back through taking on several leadership roles that have taught me time management skills, teamwork, conflict resolution, and delegation.

One of my greatest passions that I have repurposed into my engineering journey is my love for reading and writing. Specifically, I enjoy reading fantasy and sci-fi novels, and I enjoy writing short stories and attempting novels. I think it takes a certain kind of imagination to dream up of an entirely new world with unique characters and back stories. This sort of creativity is something that I held dear in my childhood writing all sorts of stories and poems, and I believe it has grown and inspired me in my engineering endeavors.

With quarantine and the increased freedom of grad school, I found myself taking upon the hobby of houseplants. Since I am home all the time, why not try to make my surroundings look a bit nicer? Well it started with one plant, and then, one plant became three plants...which became 25 plants. I think there's something exciting about watching your plants grow right before you, from just some sun, water, and love. I always send new leaf pictures to all my friends and document the process as a new leaf unfurls. It's surprisingly low maintenance and has been teaching me some much needed patience (semi-protip: more fertilizer does NOT make a happy plant). There are so many species of plants out there that look almost unreal sometimes, and growing my plant family is honestly one of the most rewarding things that I've discovered during covid times.

Let me stop you before you think, "Aren't they ridiculously annoying though? Why would I want to work with her?" There is SO much more to mechanical keyboards than your standard Razer gamer keyboard that glows like a rainbow and clicks away like you're shaking a jar of LEGOs. The customizability of mechanical keyboards is what drew me in. I was skeptical at first. I thought my standard laptop keyboard was fine, got the job done. Little did I know that I was ignoring a whole new typing experience. Mechanical keyboards are some of the smoothest keys I've typed on, almost like you are typing on clouds. And they don't always come in that clicky variety. There are silent switches that sound so muffled you can barely hear that you are typing. I love the typing experience but I also love the creative space mechanical keyboards provide. If you ever wished your keyboard had just that shade of green with just that specific shade of orange, you can make it happen or it may even have been done before. Building keyboards is relatively simple as well, but it has that relaxing effect of doing repetitive tasks (soldering the switches, putting on the keycaps over and over). Ultimately, it was just trying something new and loving it that drew me in to this hobby.

While many might not term this a "hobby" per se, I believe one of the things I love to do is try new things! I am always open to new experiences, and many times saying yes to something new that may be intimidating has turned out amazing! Some examples include deciding to study abroad in Iceland for a summer, going to various cultural and food fairs with friends, travelling to Oregon to watch the eclipse, and (seen above) attending a lights festival.

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Resume

To get a brief overview of my skills and experience, please take a look at my interactive resume below.
To forego the complexity, a copy of my resume can be downloaded by clicking the icon to the left.

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My Work

This is a brief overview of some key projects that I have undertaken in my undegraduate and graduate career. Please click on the visuals to open up a description that illustrates my projects in greater detail. For more details about my technical skills and previous coursework, please view my resume above.

At my internship with IDEX Health and Science, I conducted a Design of Experiement (DOE) model. The primary goal was to examine and find trends within torque data retrieved from valves varying in pressure rating and rotor seal material. In total, 30 valves were tested with 5 in each independent group. Trends from the data recorded were presented to key engineers in the Analytical Instruments and Advanced Systems Development teams. The analytical data can be used to facillitate future valve designs for various consumer needs.

After following a series of ANSI working drawings, I created all the individual components of a gyroscope in SolidWorks and assembled it. Using this understanding of the gyroscrope, I utilized my campus's machine shop to fabricate each component using the bandsaw, drill press, lathe, mill, and CNC machine. Afterward, I assembled the parts and test it as shown above.

Another project I undertook during my internship with IDEX Health and Science was the design and prototyping of a fixture for a pump. After taking measurements of the machine it was to be embedded in and discussing several designs with the engineers, I created an initial design to be shown to the head engineer. I then prototyped the design using aluminum sheet metal in the company's machine shop. Through manufacturing the design, I became aware of potential pitfalls in mass production of this design. To streamline the process, I revised my design to be symmetrical for easier fabrication. The design was later approved and officially ordered for assembly in the final machine.

I participated in the Biomedical Engineering Society's annual Make-a-Thon competition. The prompt consisted of designing a device to aid users with physical and/or visual impairments accurately and comfortably dispense eye drops. The design my team finalized was an automated system in which a spring-loaded one-stop eyedropper holder has a microcontrolled piston that compresses the eyedropper to dispense precisely one drop at a time. An ergonomic design coupled with a grip allows for increased dexterity for consumers, and an anti-blinking system eliminates the problem in which users frequently blink when anticipating the drop to fall. My role in this project was the CAD designer. I collaborated with a peer of mine in the design of the individual components and final assembly of the device.

In my Embedded Systems Design course, I was given a TI CC3200 LaunchPad to proram using Code Composer Studio and learn more about the communication of electronic devices and the modules used in real-time embedded systems. This included labs that utilized Universal Asynchronous Receiver/Trasmitters (UART), Serial Peripheral Interfaces, Inter-integrated circuits, ADCs, timers, and Interrupt Handlers. Key projects was include creating a simple audio interface in which the embedded system would decode dual-tone multi-frequency (DTMF) audio signals and use the input to compose messages that would print on an OLED screen which could be sent to a connected LaunchPad through a UART communication channel. Another project was utilizing RESTful API to securely connect to Amazon Web Services (AWS) and send and retrieve data from the AWS cloud. This was linked the AWS IoT Service so that a message composed on the board would be sent to the cloud and then sent through SMS to a given phone number.

What I found that I lacked in my undergraduate education was more courses tailored towards the other facets of mechatronics: electrical engineering and computer science. I'm grateful to have been able to take a Graduate Electrical Engineering Robotics course in which we were tasked to create a two-robot system. The system is composed of a mobile robot that will gather three objects of our choosing with an end effector and carry them to a staionary robot. This stationary robot will accept or refuse the objects based on certain characteristics (shape, color, sound, etc.). For my project, I utilized color since a color sensor would easily be able to detect and differentiate different colored objects.

Another project I undertook during my graduate career was a simulation of an agricultural robot. I found this class to be one of my favorites as I am definitely a visual learner! I learned about basic kinematic behavior of different vehicles and how ideal movement varies when introducing real world characteristics such as slip and skid. This laid the foundation for my understanding of pure pursuit control and robot dynamics. In this final project, I utilized my newfound knowledge to have an agricultural robot autonomously navigate a nursery of trees and use a LiDAR (simulated) sensor to identify and record the radius of the trees and their position, so that we can know when they are ready to "harvest." I had to use path planning with different headland maneuver techniques to traverse the field. I utilized a median filter to correct the noise in the simulated LiDAR sensor to retrieve more accurate data. Finally, I also simulated this in ROS with my partner as an added bonus to visualize the entire program in 3D.

My Thesis Project for my Master's Degree concerns developing a controller for the directed energy deposition (DED) process, similar to laser sintering or 3-D printing metal. There are discrepancies in the 3-D metal printing process due to heat accumulation over long periods of deposition and irregularities in how the laser hits the powder cone. I wanted to develop a height monitoring system that can evaluate in real time these errors during the deposition and create a controller that is able to alleviate the problems during the additive manufacturing process. I began with reading more about computer vision and how to analyze the height without physically measuring it as that would not be feasible. I ended up developing a way to translate pixels to an estimate height. Using this, I am able to control a powder splitting system that would control the powder flow. By controlling the powder, I can change the height of the deposited material, alleviating any build errors. I utilized the Ziegler-Nichols method in tuning my final PID controller to stabilize the error correction process.

Any Questions?

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