In my high school Design Thinking course, I explored the entire product creation process, from ideation and market surveys to sketches, prototyping, the MVP, and finally, marketing, packaging, and customer experience design. Inspired by these steps, I decided to apply this process to a real-world project at home. At that time, my family hired a company to clean our home’s AC ducts, and I observed the workers using various tools, like brushes and cloths, and going into hard-to-reach areas like the attic. This sparked my idea to design a robot to simplify and enhance the process of AC duct cleaning.

I developed a robot equipped with rubber wheels and a rotating brush to travel through AC ducts and remove accumulated dirt from the walls. After the cleaning phase, the robot sprays an antibacterial and antifungal solution to sanitize the ducts, helping maintain clean air and prevent potential respiratory issues. This hands-on experience allowed me to bring my learning from the classroom to life and tackle a problem with creativity and technical skills, demonstrating my ability to think practically and innovatively within an engineering context.