Aperia Innovations - Oswald

About Our Team

Aperia Innovations is a mock engineering design firm that is part of the senior engineering capstone class, at the California Academy of Math & Science (CAMS), in Carson, CA. In this class, the students form a corporate resemblance, and compete with two other class sections for a “contract award” from a fictitious government agency (The CARPA Initiative). They interview for positions within the “corporation”, and are responsible for all phases of the design process. Each corporation has (8) Departments, including Mechanical, Electrical, Systems and Test, Programming, Manufacturing, Media, Finance, and Outreach.The projects are different every year and are equivalent to college level project challenges.  This year, the students are engaged in a task to create a hybrid robot that can walk in a bipedal fashion and demonstrate sustained flight, without the use of traditional airfoil propellers. Here is an introduction to our team.

Our Mission

Aperia Innovations has been tasked to design and build a hybrid drone capable of ambulatory motion and flight. The hybrid drone must be able to walk bipedally, right itself in the event of a fall, and pick up a spherical object. The hybrid drone must locate a cave, where it will autonomously detect and identify Quaffles. It must then pick them up, fly through a series of vertical hoops, and drop the Quaffles in the specified game goals. The robot must also be capable of capturing the Golden Snitch mid-air, for additional points.   

The robotic mechanism will be designed to play a form of Quidditch, where the robot will walk a distance of twenty feet, pick up a game ball (Quaffle), fly through a series of vertical hoops set at different heights, and then drop the Quaffle through a predetermined basketball hoop on the outdoor basketball courts, for points. There are (5) Critical Design Reviews (CDRs) throughout the year, that are attended and assessed by our Industry Partners and Sponsors. Our goal this year is to raise $10,000.00 for the project. Through fundraising and other corporate sponsorships, we have currently raised half of that amount. Our goal is to raise the full amount by the end of March.

This course is a unique opportunity for high school students to experience STEM education, as it is practiced in the real world. While we believe that while many schools are passionate about engineering, few act on that passion to the extent of our experience at CAMS. We humbly ask for your support in our journey to learn about the applications of STEM in the real world. An example of last year’s project can be seen through a student produced documentary of the project at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ygoh3JLryEk . This class experience has been showcased in articles from both USA Today, and US News and World Reports, and has been recognized for its value to education by several colleges and universities, including MIT, Olin College of Engineering, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, Caltech, Rennsselaer, Cornell University, Harvey Mudd, among others.

This class project would not be possible were it not for the generous support and contributions from our community. Our class population is diverse and represents many people from different ethnicities and socio-economic status. Any financial support that you might be able to provide, will engage 39 students, 46% of which are women, in a true to life engineering experience. We are happy to acknowledge your contribution on our website, place your logo on our robotic device, and at our numerous outreach events unless you prefer otherwise.

Meet Our Robot Oswald

Aperia Innovations is proposing a 4 prong solution to this challenge.

1. Feed Forward Walker with compliant stability control: The walker will be a digitigrade bipedal design. The legs will use the least amount of degrees of freedom (DOF) as possible, using mechanical linkages to provide a locomotive-like motion. The design will incorporate various springs and cords to provide mechanical stability and compliance.
2. Impeller based Hexacopter: The Flying mechanism will utilize centrifugal fans, or impellers, to generate lift. Structuring the flying mechanism in a Hexacopter shape allows for the greatest stability while not sacrificing control or speed.
3. Roller Intake for Quaffles: Intake design consists of 4 perpendicular series of compliant wheels. Axles form a 1:1 bevel gear interaction. Intake functions with only one motor.
4. Net-Sinch deployment for Snitch Capture: After autonomous Vision processing and software augmented user control locate the snitch, a net will be launched to capture the snitch. A leash will be attached which allows the robot to pull the snitch closer to its body and safely land with the Snitch in its possession.