Hello I am

Nicholas Pietronuto.

These are my projects

Petrol Powered Go-Kart

Built a three wheeled go-kart by desiging it on my computer, cutting steel by hand, sourcing cheap parts with money I made from work, welding, and cutting steel with a saw.

FIRST Robotics Team

I designed the entire arm on the front of the robot that is responsible for intaking and shooting the ball into the net. I used Onshape, a CAD design platform, to design it. Our team then used a CNC machine to cut the arm plates out of polycarbonate.

3D Printable Prosthetic Hand

I designed a prosthetic hand that snaps together and is functional through the use of actuating strings and rubber bands. The way I designed the mechanism makes it adapt to complex surfaces.

GPU Accelerated Raytracer

Pathtracer: a program that simulates millions of light rays, their reflections and respective color changes. I used physical concepts like Fresnel Relfection Equations, color absorbtion, and basic optical properties. Below is the equation used, the image my program produced, and a snippet of the code. \begin{equation} L_o(\mathbf{x}, \omega_o) = L_e(\mathbf{x}, \omega_o) + \int_{\Omega} f_r(\mathbf{x}, \omega_i, \omega_o) L_i(\mathbf{x}, \omega_i) \left|\cos(\theta_i)\right| \, d\omega_i \end{equation}

Deal Finder AI

DealFinder combines webscraping with LLM's ability to estimate the value of a product based on complex chracteristics in the product's listing title. Using this AI estimated price, my program sorts the products for those whose listed price is significantly lower than the estimation. This can be used to find products that can be flipped for a profit.

Mandelbrot Fractal Plotter

Created by Benoit Mandelbrot, this amazing mathematical shape, modeled by the simple equation $$ z_{n+1} = z_n^2 + c $$ can be zoomed in on infinitely and never repeat the same exact pattern (can only zoom in so far because of computer limitations). I programmed this to run in parallel on the Graphics Processing Unit to increase framerate. Below is a snippet of the code I wrote.

Created 3D Models For NFT Videogame Future Fest

Did Paid 3D modelling work for a videogame called Future Fest. I worked primarily on character accessories. Below is a character with my model as a hat and the NFT store with characters whose hats I created.

Physics Simulations

Applied concepts learned in AP Physics to program multiple physics simulations including a cloth sim, particle physics simulation that uses sparse-grid collision optimization, and a gravity sim.