Aiden Swann | Professional Portfolio

Research encompasses my research efforts mostly in control and dynamical systems at Caltech. Educational includes projects I hope are educational. Mechanical are projects which include engineering design and fabrication. Hobbies is mostly photography I do on the side of being a student.

Research

Educational

Mechanical

Hobbies

A LLM trained on data scraped from caltech.edu domain.

An interactive web application that allows users to explore the beautiful and complex world of the Mandelbrot Set.

I create a RFID scannable PCB business card. Schematics are attached so you can make your own!

I create a mechanical slide rule which can geometrically solve the quadratic equation. This is part of a greater push of mine to use physics to solve math. Nature is an incredible calculator that solves NP hard problems in nanoseconds.

In this project I compare several methods of control for the canonical cartpole system including LQR, energy shaping, MPC, and RL.

Machine Learning

I learned basic javascript through an introductory class at Caltech. Here are some of the projects I completed.

Project Euler is a compilation of mathematical challenge problems that are intended to be solved using a combination of mathematical elimination and computational brute force.

An important part of scientific communication is creating compelling and aesthetically pleasing visualizations. The goal of this project is to introduce me to blender, which is a professional animating software which I hope to use to create scientific animations. I started my learning process by creating several animation using builtin physics simulations.

Machined a model Wankel rotary engine as my project in Caltech's CNC machining class ME23. In this class I learned the essentials of CNC machining on Mills and Lathes. We used a Trak CNC mills and Lathes and well as Haas CNC machines. I did all aspects of programming and setup to make each of the parts.

Final project of CDS233 nonlinear controls. Development of control algorithms for a planar and full 3D qaudrotor. Starting with feedback linearzation and control Lyapunov functions. Then we implement control saftey functions and backup control barrier function. Finally we demonstrate MPC on both the planar and full 3D quadrotor.

Final project of CDS232 nonlinear dynamics. Analysis of stability of the planar quadrotor system including Liptschitz continuity, Picard iteration, bounds on perturbation, equilibrium points, radius of attraction and safety

Research conducted in the AMBER lab at Caltech during winter quarter. Extension to research completed over the summer on backup controllers for high speed geofencing. Extends previous work to support multiple agents with multiple backup maneuvers

Safety Critical Control

The Caltech AIAA team we received a $140,000 grant for our cable based lunar transportation method. I worked on the autonomy and planning aspects of the project.

Me72 is a two term rigorous team-based engineering design and fabrication challenge. Teams have 6 months to to design, assemble, and evaluate the fidelity and mechanical reliability of their robots. This years challenge is sumo robotics

Conducted a summer undergraduate research fellowship (SURF) at Caltech for the summer of 2021. Worked closely with Prof Aaron Ames and graduate student Drew Singletary. At the conclusion of the project we wrote a paper which has been submitted to IEEE RA-L journal.

Used generative machine learning to investigate new ways of picturing the cosmos. State of the art pretrained models are primed with extraterrestrial keywords which combined multiple aspects of the human relationship with space.

Machine Learning

My group designed an innovative shifting transmission, which won first place in the Caltech ME14 competition.

Caltech ME14 Octagon design project. A two week design based robotics competition. No designs are constructed.

Commissioned to design a webcam spectrometer software for chemistry lab due to pandemic at home conditions

Astrophotography photos taken over the years. All taken with a Canon EOS 7D

Photos taken with a EOS 7D. Selection of some of my favorites from my instagram.

Film photographs taken with a Pentax ME super found in my basement. Shot with Kodak Gold and HB5plus.