Year in Review

[ “Year in Review”  is where you should reflect on the past year and show how you have evolved as a person and as a student.  You may want to focus on your growth in a particular area (as a leader, scholar, researcher, etc.) or you may want to talk about your overall experience over the past year.  For more guidance on using your ePortfolio, including questions and prompts that will help you get started, please visit the Honors & Scholars ePortfolio course in Carmen. To get answers to specific questions, please email eportfolio@osu.edu. Delete these instructions and add your own post.]

G.O.A.L.S.

G.O.A.L.S: Global Awareness, Original Inquiry, Academic Integrity, Leadership Development, Service Engagement


Global Awareness:

So far in my undergraduate, being in Green Engineering Scholars has taught me the most about the world around me. Through community service and learning in class I have expanded my horizons to know where we have problems involving pollution, lack of food, overpopulation and other devastating diseases.

 

Original Inquiry:

 I have not participated in any research so far in my undergraduate career, but I do plan on joining a lab sometime in the second semester or the beginning of my sophomore year. I have a genuine interest in many fields throughout Electrical and Computer Engineering, enough to the point that I’d be happy to join any research lab in those fields. Personally, I am interested the most in neuromorphic computing and the development of memristors. Both of these topics are state of the art and I believe they are the future of computing.

 

Academic Integrity:

I chose Computer Engineering for my major because I am highly interested in the future of computing. I believe there is going to a revolution in how computers operate within the next years, and I want to be a part of making this happen. As I mentioned in the Original Inquiry section, I have a genuine interest in most of the fields in my major. I find enjoyment in reading about the new research and technologies that are announced, and even though I may not fully understand how they work, I spend my time learning what is needed to understand them. Outside of the classroom, I have joined the EcoCar team and work with the Connected and Autonomous Vehicles sub-team. This team lets me gain teamwork abilities and also learn more about the autonomous vehicles field.

 

Leadership Development:

On the teams I have been in so far, EcoCar and Fundamentals of Engineering, I believe I have chosen the roll of leader. I end up delegating tasks to other team members and help wherever I am needed.

 

Service Engagement:

Through Green Engineering Scholars, I have spent my time helping in a youth garden in a low income development. There I helped weed and reuse parts of the garden to reduce costs of replanting every season. I also plan on joining a service based club sometime during my sophomore year.

 

Career

[“Career” is where you can collect information about your experiences and skills that will apply to your future career.  Like your resume, this is information that will evolve over time and should be continually updated.  For more guidance on using your ePortfolio, including questions and prompts that will help you get started, please visit the Honors & Scholars ePortfolio course in Carmen. To get answers to specific questions, please email eportfolio@osu.edu. Delete these instructions and add your own post.]

Artifacts

EcoCar CAVs – Line Following Robot

In EcoCar we built a Line Following Robot as our introduction project. This tasked us with the goal of taking a simple Amazon kit and working as a team to create a robot that could follow a line with just a camera. I was on the Motors team during this project and was tasked with creating an API for the other teams to use for moving the robot. One of the problems we solved was calculating how fast the robot should move given a certain number from -1 to 1, with the sign signifying the direction the car is moving in. We solved this problem by testing the distance the car moved given different values between those 0 and 1 then flipped the result for the reverse direction. This gave us the ability to apply a linear function of control to a non-linear function of speed, which means that teams that have not learned how they work will have a much easier time developing around them. This project was really fun because it allowed me to work on the part of the robot that I want to get my degree in. I would love to have at least part of my job require physically touching some machine to get it to work and not just sitting behind a computer all the time. This project also exposed me a bit more to autonomous vehicles, which is a topic that I have been interested in for awhile now. The EcoCar CAVs team should continue to teach me more on this topic.

Programming environment during the project

 

About Me

 

Hi! My name is Zach DelVecchio. I am a 1st year Computer Engineering student at The Ohio State University. I love anything involving computers, with topics like processor design, computer architecture, programming language development and other related fields being my favorites. I spend my time outside of college hanging out with friends and playing video games. I also am a part of the Connected and Automatic Vehicles (CAVs) team on EcoCAR, where we are designing automated systems for car control.

My previous work experience includes employment at my local school district as a Technology Intern. In this job I spent my time troubleshooting our end-user’s computer in one-on-one and remote ways. I spent most of my time this last summer (2018) developing a system that would automatically re-image all 1500 of the macOS devices in our district and place them into a student-usable state. From this job, I learned how to effectively script in Bash and Python for mobile device management, excel inside of a Linux/UNIX environment, and I also gained extensive inter-personal skills.

In the future, I hope to be either employed by some company developing the bleeding edge of technology or spending my time researching in graduate school. As of right now, I do not have a definite job that I am aiming for, but as long as it somewhat aligns with the interests I mentioned earlier, I will be completely fine with it.