Roby Hooper

Led a four-person team building an autonomous underwater vehicle to measure water quality at Dana Point, with custom analog sensor circuits and closed-loop depth control.

• Built op-amp circuits for pressure, temperature, and pH sensors, scaling each signal into the microcontroller’s 0–3.3 V range.
• Implemented proportional control with an MPX5700 pressure sensor, letting the vehicle reach 2, 3, and 4 m depth waypoints autonomously.
• Wrote MATLAB and C++ to control the AUV’s Teensy and processed data from deployments in the HMC tank room, pHake Lake, and Dana Point.
• Validated depth control in field trials and diagnosed sensor failures — pH calibration in seawater and a shorted thermistor — in the final report.
• Served as project lead — setting deadlines and delegating work based on each teammate’s strengths.

• C++
• Teensy / Arduino
• MATLAB
• Op-Amps
• Control Systems
• Sensor Design
• Water Quality
• Field Testing

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Built and ran a live BTC binary options trading algorithm on prediction markets, turning option prices into implied volatility and Greek exposures.

• Derived Greek values and implied volatility from observed option prices to drive a live BTC binary options strategy.
• Built and ran the trading algorithm on prediction markets, executing over 300 trades.
• Paired options-pricing theory with live execution on a market-making desk.

• Options Pricing
• Greeks
• Implied Volatility
• Binary Options
• Prediction Markets
• Algorithmic Trading

Designed and built a collapsible, portable mobile lectern as a five-person team, carrying it from problem statement through prototyping, manufacturing, testing, and iteration.

• Worked through the full product-development process: defining the problem, ideating, prototyping, manufacturing, testing, and iterating toward a final design.
• Split design, fabrication, and testing across a team of five, turning early concepts into a working physical product.
• Designed the lectern to fold flat and be carried between classrooms, keeping it portable and easy to store.
• Produced a lectern the professor still uses to teach his classes today.

• Experimental Design
• Product Development
• Prototyping
• Manufacturing
• Collapsible Design
• Portability
• Iteration
• Teamwork

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Designed a zipline to maximize the peak speed of a 70 kg rider while respecting the physical and experiential limits of the ride.

• Used equations from a zipline analysis paper to model the line’s shape, the rider’s path, and the velocity profile, then set up the optimization in MATLAB.
• Optimized the design against constraints on rope tension, vertical drop, and the experience of riders of varying weights.
• Balanced a faster ride against safety and comfort limits, showing how the optimum shifts as the rider weight changes.

• MATLAB
• Nonlinear Optimization
• Mechanics
• Numerical Modeling

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