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Join us in exploring transformative engineering solutions. Our projects push the boundaries of technology.

Join us in exploring transformative engineering solutions. Our projects push the boundaries of technology.
This senior capstone project for the BSECET program at Valencia College showcases our team's dedication to engineering excellence. With a focus on real-world challenges, we aim to create functional systems from scratch. Our innovative proposals include an automatic robotic waxing arm, a modular security box, and a pioneering forklift safety kit. Our mission is to present our findings and designs to a panel of engineering judges for evaluation and feedback.
Adriano Josue intro place holder

Industrial waxing processes in manufacturing environments like Siemens require repetitive, precise handling of components — picking pieces from a conveyor, dipping them into wax at a controlled depth and speed, retrieving them, and placing them on a cooling conveyor. This process is currently labor-intensive and inconsistent, exposing workers to heat and fumes while introducing variability in coating quality. This project proposes a robotic arm system that fully automates the waxing cycle, integrating with existing conveyor infrastructure to perform pick, dip, retrieve, and place operations with repeatable precision, including PID-controlled dip speed and hold time to ensure consistent coating thickness across cycles.
Our custom waxing automation system is designed specifically for pick‑dip‑place wax coating, which makes it much easier to deploy than general‑purpose industrial robots. It includes built‑in closed‑loop dip control (PID‑regulated depth, speed, and hold time) and is already designed around conveyor integration, so there is no need for extra modules or complex setup. Programming complexity is low because the system runs a fixed, task‑specific routine rather than a fully flexible robot program, which is ideal for a student or prototype environment. In contrast, options such as the Universal Robots UR3e, Epson T3 SCARA, and Yaskawa MotoMini require additional programming and hardware to achieve similar functionality, and they typically cost in the tens of thousands of dollars. As a result, this project offers the core features needed for reliable waxing automation at a prototype‑level budget and is suitable for student builders, whereas the comparable industrial solutions are more expensive, more complex, and not aimed at educational use.

Existing security storage solutions force users to choose between inexpensive but static lock boxes and expensive full safe systems with no room for growth. This project proposes a modular locking cabinet system inspired by IKEA's EKET line, where a single master unit — housing the access control interface, authentication logic, and bus controller — governs an expandable chain of low-cost slave modules, each containing only a locking actuator and a minimal MCU. The bus is treated as untrusted by design: all inter-module communication is encrypted and protected against replay attacks using a rolling counter or nonce scheme, so that a device physically tapping into the bus cannot spoof commands or trigger unlocks. New slave modules enroll automatically on physical connection by authenticating against the master using a pre-provisioned shared secret, requiring no user configuration beyond plugging them in.
This project provides a modular, expandable security system that can grow over time, unlike typical consumer safes and locks that are fixed single units. Each module connects over an encrypted bus with replay protection and supports secure enrollment, so new devices can be added without weakening overall security. The system also supports per‑module access logging and fine‑grained permissions, features that basic padlocks and many home safes do not offer or only implement through proprietary apps. Because it is designed around a prototype‑level budget rather than a fixed commercial product, it can be expanded without replacing the entire system while keeping hardware costs closer to low‑end consumer devices than to high‑end safes.

Forklift operators face severely limited forward visibility when loads are elevated or bulky, creating dangerous blind zones where pedestrians can go undetected. This project proposes a retrofittable sensor kit that attaches to the front of a forklift and uses a TF-Mini Plus LiDAR to continuously scan the forward zone and trigger local audible and visual alarms when a person or obstacle is detected within a configurable safety distance — with all real-time behavior running deterministically on a dedicated STM32 microcontroller, entirely independent of any network. The system also incorporates an IMU that logs timestamped motion data using adaptive rate logging — low rate during normal operation, high rate during triggered events — functioning as a lightweight black box for incident investigation. As a stretch goal, a secondary ESP32 co-processor receives log data over UART and forwards it wirelessly to a supervisor dashboard, providing fleet-level visibility without ever touching the safety-critical alarm path.
This project provides a retrofittable safety system for industrial vehicles that focuses on affordable proximity detection and rich incident data rather than expensive integrated braking packages. It uses ultrasonic and LiDAR sensing to detect nearby obstacles and logs IMU data and incident events in a built‑in “black box,” giving operators and safety managers better insight into how and when near‑misses occur. Unlike many commercial fork truck safety scanners and camera systems, it does not require complex integration to existing braking systems, but it still provides audible and visual alarms to alert drivers in real time. The hardware is designed for a prototype‑level budget and is suitable for a student build, while commercial systems can cost thousands of dollars and are not meant to be modified or extended.
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