Projects
Robotics Final Project
This was my final project for ECE495: Intro to Robotics. The goal of this project was to simulate a robot that could play tic-tac-toe.
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Robotics Midterm Project
This was my midterm project for ECE495: Intro to Robotics. The goal of this project was to use ROS with Gazebo and MoveIt to write my initials in space with a simulated UR5e robotic arm. The project was an exercise in motion planning and a gentle introduction to the MoveIt Python interface.
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Old Gods - A Game Jam Submission
This project is my first successful foray into game development, and a submission to my first ever game jam! A game jame is a lot like a hackathon, but for game development. This game, Old Gods, is a small game I programmed for Mini Jam 61, inspired by MOBAs like League of Legends and classic top-down roguelike games. Check out the game on itch.io at https://therhombus.itch.io/old-gods.
Cellular Automata Simulation
The second project in my advanced software design class: a complete simulation of cellular automata. If you've ever seen Conway's Game of Life or similar simulations, this is that! This complete JavaFX application can simulate an arbitrary cellular automata. It is designed with modularity and extensibility in mind. Check out the project on Github at https://github.com/thomas1400/simulation.
Alien Invasion Breakout
I'm taking a class in advanced software design this semester, and our first project was to code our own remake of the classic game Breakout using Java and the JavaFX package. With this project, I started learning best practices that will help me design code that is clean, well-structured, and maintainable. Check out the project on Github at https://github.com/thomas1400/breakout.
A Robotic Arm
I spent some time in fall 2019 designing and building a small robotic arm! It wasn't my most successful project, but was a good learning experience - I learned about the challenges associated with fine control of robotic systems and the limitations of the microcontrollers I used to drive it.
Ultimate Tic-Tac-Toe in Java
One of my most satisfying software projects: a Java implementation of Ultimate Tic-Tac-Toe -- tic-tac-toe with a twist! The standalone executable includes a simple GUI with the Graphics2D library and an option to play against a (remarkably good!) AI.
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Image Processing with JavaScript
A creative coding project with p5.js: an implementation of the Floyd-Steinberg Dithering algorithm for color quantization and quantization error correction. This was a really interesting exercise, and I learned a lot about data structures and image processing!
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Ray Tracing with JavaScript
Another creative coding project with p5.js! This one was a ray tracing simulation, a technique often used in 3D rendering algorithms. In this case, it isn't used for rendering, but rather a cool visualization of a light source moving around a 2D space.
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This Website
I started creating this website thinking that I could just download a template, paste in my info, and call it a day. I quickly realized that the template had plenty of issues--fixing them was a huge learning experience! I believe troubleshooting is one of the best ways to learn, and this certainly involved a lot of troubleshooting. I picked up a great amount of HTML and CSS, of which I had no prior knowledge, in just the four or five days it took to make this site, and I really enjoyed doing it!