Presentation of Senior Science Fair IEEE RAS Special Award Winning Project
Science Fair Project: Demeter:
Yizhen "Jimmy" Han, will present his award winning science fair project called Demeter. Demeter is a bio-mimetic fruit-harvesting system designed to address agricultural labor shortages while reducing fruit bruising. Its compliant, tendon-driven tentacles, inspired by both octopus and human hand, use logarithmically scaled segments with an offset hybrid backbone, omnidirectional near the base and single-plane toward the tip, with 30° mechanical stops to conform predictably to varied fruit shapes while promoting broader contact and more even pressure distribution. A custom OpenGL program is created that supports rapid parameter visualization before transferring the geometry to Onshape for CAD development and fabrication. A two-servo-based tendon actuation unit is designed to reliably control the extension and retraction of tentacles while minimizing weight and unnecessary costs. The end effector is mounted on a 5-DoF LeRobot SO-ARM 101 with dual-camera sensing; numerical inverse kinematics, ACT, and SmolVLA imitation-learning methods are implemented for autonomous fruit approaching, detaching, transferring, and collecting. Tests with fruit-specific artificial stems demonstrated damage-free, successful harvests of apples, oranges, and strawberries, while aiming accuracy, grip strength, and detachment motion are areas requiring further improvement.
Bio:
Jimmy Han is a senior at TMI Episcopal, in the residential life program. He is the leader of the TMI robotics team, vice president of the TMI AI club, and president of the STEAM Competition club; he participated in choir as bass and the JROTC air rifle team, and the JROTC JLAB team. He participated in the Alamo Regional Science Fair and won 2nd place in the ARSEF Engineering senior division and the Xerox Award for Innovation & Information Tech. He also led the TMI robotics team from semi-regional to regional, winning the innovate award in both sophomore and junior years. His goal is to develop end-to-end systems expertise in robotics, spanning mechanical design, electronics, controls, and software, and to integrate these disciplines into a cohesive robotic system, and his interest in robotics is fully autonomous robots working in specific, slightly undetermined environments ( agriculture and medical robots ) and humanoids, targeting human-oriented design, reliability, and accessibility. Aside from the Demeter project, he is also working on independent research in fluid dynamics, investigating how soft-wall boundaries, geometric shape of squirmer model, potentially magnetic field, and non-Newtonian fluid affect the motion of squirmer approaching wall, as well as a personal project called printProof, a finite element analysis engine for class size 3d printing focused on stress/fracture analysis.
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- Starts 02 September 2026 05:00 AM UTC
- Ends 23 September 2026 04:00 PM UTC
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Agenda
11:30: Visitors may begin arriving (visitors must check in at the front gate)
12:00: Presentation begins