Engineering

The Pebbles provide guided breathing exercises for stress resilience and are designed to be used anytime, anywhere to promote mental wellbeing. As a co-founder of Glimp, I’ve helped build the company from the ground up. The journey from concept to commercialisation reflects a commitment to improving mental health through innovative technology. I’ve led the design of the Pebbles, from clay models to injection moulding design, communicating with manufacturers and setting up the assembly process. The Pebbles have been awarded with the iF Design Award and Philips Innovation Award, and have been featured on the Dutch Design Week.

The calibration robot is used to automatically calibrate Eternal Sun’s Climate Chamber Solar Simulator (CCSS). The CCSS is the perfect setup to perform solar testing under controlled environmental conditions. Accelerated life testing (ALT), LID testing, PID testing and weathering are among the options. As lead engineer, I was responsible for the mechanical design and assembly.

A UV light simulator to test the degradation of PV modules. It was built for a PV module testing lab for a customer in Central America. The system can hold two modules and can withstand temperatures up to 80 °C. It includes a data acquisition and relays system to capture and store temperature and UV Irradiation data and shut off after a certain threshold is reached. As lead engineer, I was responsible for the project planning, mechanical design, assembly, programming of the control software and testing.

In addressing the challenge of global food demand with diminishing agricultural land quality, I designed the QIEM-Array for my graduation project. This advanced germination testing apparatus features nine controllable cells for precise seed testing under ISTA standards, utilizing machine learning for analysis and optimization. Developed through comprehensive research and prototyping, the QIEM-Array promises enhanced efficiency and reliability in seed quality assessment for the agricultural sector.

The goal of this project was to build a motor speed control system starting from the component level. The project had the following requirements:

• The motor should be speed controlled, between 10 – 120 rpm (although ideally the lower limit should be 5 rpm).
• The controller should be synchronous, and implemented using fix-point arithmetic.
• Bi-directional communication: the control computer should send a speed reference value to the motor controller (AVR: ATMega88) and the controller should be able to send the measured speed value to the control computer.
• The motor’s speed should be fine-tuned by using an analogue input signal between 0 – 5 V. 0 V means – 10 rpm under the speed reference, while 5 V means + 10 rpm over the speed reference.

I designed, built and debugged components such as: a serial communicaton board, an optocoupler board, an inverter board, an AVR board and an amplifier board. The embedded software was written in C.

BorgWarner produces Integraded Drive Modules (IDMs) that are used in Electronic Vehicles and Hybrids. They asked us to explore the possibilities of having an Electronic Park Brake (EPB) as an add-on to their current design of the IDM. After an extensive ideation process, we came up with a design for an EPB that required minimal changes to the IDM. In this project, I was responsible for the ideation process and the CAD design.

When people get injured in hazardous environments it is important to rescue them without endangering additional people. One way of doing this is to use search and rescue robots that can navigate through the environment to find and rescue the injured person. The purpose of this project was to design and prototype a simplified version of the search and rescue robot that can navigate and rescue within a maze. The required technical specifications of the robot were:

• Can navigate by following a black line on the ground.
• Can navigate short distances without the black line.
• Can pick up and transport cylinders from within the maze to its beginning.
• Can rescue three cylinders within a six minutes.

The robot was equipped with a range of reflectance sensors to detect the line on the floor. Three ultrasonic distance sensors were placed to enable the robot to navigate in cases it lost the line. The wheels and the gripper were driven by servo motors. All electronics were controlled by an Arduino Uno.

The Quooker CUBE provides people with cold, filtered and sparkling water, using the already installed Quooker tap. The device, the actual Quooker CUBE, is stored next to the Quooker boiling water reservoir in the kitchen cabinet. CO₂ stored in a gas cylinder is added to the water making it sparkle. To connect the CO₂ cylinder to the CUBE, a connector is used. When the cylinder is empty, it needs to be replaced by the user. The current connector has some imperfections like sharp edges, a tube that obstructs the replacement and requiring more force than desired to connect to the cylinder. Also, the system does not provide feedback to the user. Quooker has asked team Quool to redesign the currently sold connector.

During the course Advanced Embodiment Design, the connector of the Quooker CUBE is redesigned. The CO₂nnector was born after iterative prototyping and user testing. The tube no longer obstructs the replacement and the cylinder is guided into the connector. An LED ring and pressure sensor are integrated to provide the user with feedback on the remaining capacity and the attachment of the CO₂ cylinder. The shape of the connector is optimized in terms of comfort and aesthetics. These different aspects of the connector were validated by user tests. A final user test, a between subject test, revealed that users of the CO₂nnector rate their experience more positively compared to the users of the current connector.

There’s a big trend towards urbanization. By 2050, 50% of the world population will live in cities. The parcel industry is also growing. Expectations are that its size will double every 8 years. This will cause a lot of congestion in and around cities. The Ford Vecto is a car that can transport both passengers and parcel. Parcel is being transported with autonomous vehicles. When the car is not fully in use by passengers, the chairs can fold down to make room for the autonomous pods. This makes the car very flexible in adjusting for the demand for both people and parcel transport at any given moment.

Too many people spend a large part of their day being stuck in traffic. In The Netherlands the vast majority of people go to work by car for distances greater than 20 km. For those people going by bike is not an option, because it’s too far. With public transport you loose to much freedom. 

This is the vehicle that fills the gap between the electric bike and electric car. With pedal support, it can reach speeds up to 80 km/h. It is suitable for use on both car roads and cycle paths. When you encounter a traffic jam, the smart navigation recalculates the route. In this way, traffic jams can be avoided by via cycle paths. When the vehicle enters a bicycle path, the maximum speed is automatically limited to 45 km/u. 

This was a project for my BSc Final Project for my Industrial Design Engineering. The project was picked by the client Gazelle as one of the top 3 projects. Later Gazelle decided to purchase the rights of the project to look into possible further development.

“Sitting is the new smoking.” For every hour of working, it is recommended to get away from the desk and take a 15-minute break. The Xyloopphone is a wooden instrument designed for people who work in an office to use in their breaks. The user has the choice to compose their own music or to use a pre-composed music piece. 
I designed the Xyloophone for my studies Industrial Design Engineering. It contains xylophone, a drum, a tambourine and an eggshaker. The music plays in a loop, which consists of 32 rows. Each rows has 12 pins, of which 8 are for the one-octave xylophone. When the instrument rotates, the pins hit spring-loaded hammers, which will in turn hit the instruments.

The development of driver assisting systems and autonomous functionality requires a lot of tests and experiments to ensure performance of the system and also functional safety. Since testing on full scale vehicles is expensive and dependent on weather and road conditions, control algorithms can be tested on a scaled vehicle instead. 

The Delft Scaled Vehicle (DSV) was designed and built with a project for the final project for our BSc Mechanical Engineering. The DSV is a platform equipped with an on-board computer to process data, and sensors for determining speed, direction and positioning. The two actuators controlling the DSV are the steering angle servo and the drive line motor. The DSV is equipped with normal vehicle sensors, e.g. ultrasonic sensors, wheel speed sensors, Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU). Furthermore, the vehicle is equipped with environment perception sensors, e.g. camera, laser sensors, lidar. The DSV is evaluated in different open loop tests, e.g. a double lane change to ensure functionality of the system. 
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This is a 3D Printer that I’ve designed from the ground up.