User:E.Coleshill

A mechatronics and artificial intelligence systems engineering student at Western University. President of the WE FIRST Robotics Club, and DIY robotics enthusiast.

WE FIRST is a university robotics club at Western University that focuses on teaching robotic principles through running both projects and workshops for engineering students at Western and an all girls FIRST Robotics FRC team (team 4617 DAUN). I am the current president of WE FIRST (2025-Present) and have focused on running ESP-32 projects/workshops to broaden both my and my peers knowledge and experience, running skill building events/challenges such as RI3D, and the FRC team; encouraging student success of the next generation.

The ESP-32 workshop series/project a team of executives and I have been running has been a massive success for our community of 30+ people. I've lead the workshop series for students to learn how to design, ideate, and fabricate their own ESP-32 based minibot using autonomous PID driving to solve a classic maze. Students have been required to learn how to use motor drivers, IMU's, distance sensors, motors, and more to solve a maze using closed loop control. This has been a massive growing experience for me and my team in both our technical skills and leadership skills.

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On January 10th 2026, I led a three day challenge to build a robot for the 2026 FIRST Robotics FRC challenge REBUILT. After months of logistical planning and coordination with my team of executives, in only three days my team of 27 people and I designed, ideated, and fabricated a functional prototype robot for the 2026 competition (timeline is usually 3 months for high school students). As a technical project it was a massive success yielding a fully functional robot and provided me and my team with experience with DFM CAD experience, fabrication experience, electrical, software, and brainstorming/ideation experience. As the event coordinator it was a phenomenal experience in event organization, leadership, teamwork, logistical organizing, and managing. With such a strict budget for time and multiple moving parts and sub teams this was a challenging project for me, however through thoughtful planning, preparation, and managing I felt calm and focused under the pressure and it led to a high quality result.

Day One: Jan 10th the challenge was released at 12 noon. Within the hour the whole team was up to speed on the challenge rules, objectives, and constraints. The following two to three hours were dedicated to brainstorming and ideation in three smaller breakout groups, designed by me to ensure the maximum creativity and to mitigate tunnel vision on one design. This proved successful and in the following hour the team narrowed down to one optimal design given our time and material constraints. The rest of the night was dedicated to creating a full robot CAD and 3D printing parts for the following day.

Day Two: Jan 11th we continued our CAD and finished up our digital design in the morning. In the afternoon and evening sub mech teams began fabrication, assembly, and testing of their respective parts. One element that needed extra attention was the shooter assembly which required ideation and plenty of fine tuning from its initial design (an example of this is the compression on the game piece needed to be increased by an inch to find the optimal compression). Electrical teams began work on the wiring harness and sub mech assemblies into the evening. The programming team also began work into the night to give sub teams accurate tests of their assemblies.

Day Three: Jan 12th in the morning to afternoon sub mechs were finished and electrical harnessing was completed. In the evening, the sub assemblies were integrated together onto the robot drive base and all final mechanical tasks were completed. Electrical finished hooking up the sub mechs and programming worked on tuning PID's on the robot and mapping driver controls.

Submission Day: With the robot due at 12 noon on Jan 13th the programming team finished their tasks and media filmed and produced a 2026 RI3D release video on YouTube to go out at exactly 12 with our accomplished robot. We made the deadline on time and finished all objectives we set out to complete.

I'm very grateful for every member on the team and my wonderful team of executives that helped plan and budget the event months in advance. Our success was impossible without all of them.

On November 21, 2025 I competed in the Western Engineering Competition in the senior division and placed 2nd overall with my team of 4. We had from 5pm - 3am to design and build an autonomous, amphibious vehicle to remove Styrofoam balls from a water section. During this competition we practiced our brainstorming, ideation, design, fabrication, troubleshooting, and presentation skills. The technical solution to this problem was to use skids to glide along a reference surface (keeping our robot on track), a big plow on the front, amphibious wheels, redundancy modes, sensor filtering, and robust programming. In the end our design placed 2nd against nearly 30 other teams. This competition and its tight timeline was an excellent exercise for our technical abilities, teamwork, work ethic, and dedication.

On November 8, 2024 I competed in the Western Engineering Competition in the junior division and placed 6th overall with my team of 4. We had from 5pm - 10pm to build a launching device to shoot spaceships (nerf bullets) as far as possible and hold in a ready to fire state using a trigger mechanism. With little more than carboard, popsicle sticks, and rubber bands our team ideated a crossbow design that could hold more potential energy in wooden flexures than just elastics in a slingshot. This method of strong extra energy worked phenomenally and set us apart in our division from the rest of the teams just building slingshots. Our design shot the furthest in our division and maxed out the testing field (however we lost points on other judging criteria like weight). Overall this was a great experience in rapid prototyping and thinking outside the box.

During high school I was the team captain, electrical lead, and mechanical sub lead for the FRC 2023-2024 rookie season for the team 9580 Cybears (now the Grizzly Gears). I helped delegate, lead sub assemblies, and manage the team as well as work on CAD designs, metal fabrication, and electrical systems. We competed in Newmarket qualifying as 8th alliance captain, Georgian College qualifying as 5th alliance captain, and qualified for provincials in Mississauga finishing 21st in our division and 55th in our district. Link to news article.

I started and ran a Vex V5 club at my high school St. Peters Catholic Secondary School after school from 2023-2024. We competed in Skills Ontario in the 2023-2024 Vex V5 competition Over Under. In this club, I independently designed a new drivetrain concept for omnidirectional movement (by standard called a kiwi drive). The concept I came up with and built is lighter and more agile than other omnidirectional designs as it uses 1-2 less wheels, motors, and less framing that classic designs.

In high school I built a two linkage robotic arm using servos and created a systems of equations for it myself. While it runs off of a Arduino Nano, my current efforts on this project are to run the robotic arm off of a computer I built myself in 2020 following Ben Eater's 6502 design (using the 6502 chip, the same CPU in Apple II, Commodore 64, Atari 2600, and more). I designed circuits for the peripherals to interface with the VIA chip. This includes a digital input for the joystick and a I2C pwm controller for the servos. Currently I'm focused on programming the systems of equations into the computer in 6502 assembly. This project is a work in progress at this time. Currently I am working on a stepper motor + cycloidal drive design that will have more torque than the servos.

In April, 2023 I hiked for 12 days to the base camp of Mount Everest in Nepal with my family to raise money for homeless youth with a group. We hiked over 170km, gained over 2,500m in elevation (peaking at 5,450m), and raised over $7,000 for the charity Youth Haven in Barrie Ontario. Link to CBC article.

I spent over 260 hours from 2022-2024 teaching students at St. John Paul II Catholic Elementary School afterschool to build and program Vex IQ robots after school. I taught them mechanical principles such as mechanical advantage and rigid vs flexible assemblies, how to program from scratch in a block coding based software, and concepts such as the engineering process. They completed projects such as search patterns with robots, line following robots, and automated competition runs for the 2018-2019 Vex Iq competition Next Level, and the 2019-2020 competition Squared Away as I had access to these competition kits. My students competed against St. Peters Catholic Secondary School in a competition I organized, and won in programming and prototyping.

• Standard First Aid - CPR C - AED Blended

• WHIMIS

• ICT SHSM (workshops and seminars): basic electrical safety (3 Hours), sector specific software 1 (6 Hours) sector specific software 2 (6 Hours), portfolio development (3 Hours), project management (3 Hours), computer hardware (3 Hours), electronics - basic (3 Hours), advanced training in a technology (6 Hours), specialized skills training program/competition (6 Hours)

• AOA (Alpine Ontario Alpin)
• FIRST Robotics FRC
• Sunstangs (Western Engineering)
• WE FIRST (Western Engineering)
• WCC (Western Climbing Club)