Kai Collins | Portfolio

Hey, I'm Kai.

I'm a Robotics MS / Mechanical Engineering BS student at WPI, interested in the intersection of mechanical design and software development for adaptive systems.

Check out my projects

About Me

I'm a senior at Worcester Polytechnic Institute pursuing a combined Robotics MS and Mechanical Engineering BS, expecting to graduate with both degrees in 2027. I'm a multidisciplinary engineer at heart, I'm always working to broaden my understanding across multiple dimensions of a project.

I've built up hands-on experience through a co-op at a medical device company doing mechanical prototyping and analysis, alongside a range of personal projects + research spanning robotics, embedded systems, and AI. I love building things and figuring out how they work end to end.

My Work

High-Force Underactuated Robotic Hand Masters Thesis

An underactuated construction hand. I'm looking into whether a membrane between the digits makes grasps more stable.

Robotic Manipulation Platform: 6-DOF Arm, Sim-to-Real, Chess Pick-and-Place

A 6-DOF robotic arm built from CAD through a full ROS2/MoveIt2 stack and a MuJoCo digital twin, targeting effective manipulation on high backlash, low-cost hardware only using wrist-mounted vision.

GR-0X Morphing Humanoid Upper Body Research Platform + VR teleoperation

A morphing humanoid upper body that extends reach by 75% and keeps a 10kg payload capacity. Built for VR teleoperation.

Dual Vector RAG AI TOEFL Writing Assistant

An AI writing evaluator for TOEFL/IELTS prep, built for a WPI IQP project. Combines semantic embedding and algorithmic vectorization with RAG to score essays against real rubrics.

Audio Reactive DMX Party Lighting

A 6,000-LED ceiling with individually addressable pixels, driven by real-time Python audio analysis and TouchDesigner visuals synced to the music.

Other / Old Projects

Robotic Arm FK & IK Solver

Flow Sim / Heat Analysis for CPU Waterblock

Robo-Parking Motion Planner

EBike + EDirtBike