Semester Project: Optimization of MOLLUSCA Robot
Our project centers around a microplastic collector robot, called MOLLUSCA. For this class, our focus (problem statement) will be to maximize the difference between energy generated and energy consumed, and maximize plastic recovery (objective function) by adjusting geometry, such as shape and mass distribution, and power source (design variables) while satisfying buoyancy, size, and operation time (constraints) requirements at the given scale for the entire robot, material density, and operating temperature (parameters). Click the link above to read more!
Other than our semester project, this class consisted of 4 homework assignments exploring system decomposition, simple unconstrained optimization, design of experiments, gradient based optimization (Newton’s method, constraint qualifications), penalty methods, simulated annealing, heuristic optimization (particle swarm optimization, genetic algorithm), scaling, isoperformance, etc.