Astraeus

Astraeus is my current senior design project and easily one of the most exciting and challenging builds I’ve worked on so far. It’s a Mars rover prototype designed to demonstrate autonomous alignment, terrain navigation, and solar panel maintenance. The project’s still a work in progress, but it’s been a really fun experience that’s pushing me to use everything I’ve learned.

The rover uses a rocker-bogie suspension system to handle rough terrain, a motorized arm with dual static brushes to clear dust off panels, and proximity sensors for alignment and obstacle detection. I’ve been using Fusion for all the CAD work and relied heavily on 3D printing to build custom parts for the arm, chassis, and drivetrain.

So far, Astraeus has been a great opportunity to combine mechanical design, embedded systems, and robotics into one cohesive project. It’s designed for Earth, inspired by Mars, and built to reflect the kind of engineering I love doing, hands-on, creative, and grounded in solving real-world problems.