Ray Sha

Making / 2024—now

A cut made room to move.

A low-cost robot for carrying sensors into drains, riverbanks, and canals that are awkward or unsafe to inspect directly.

A laser-cut PET sheet with a repeating kirigami pattern.
The cut pattern in a flat PET sheet.
A transparent PET sheet opened along its cut pattern.
Opening the cuts changes how the sheet bends and stretches.
The environmental sensing robot resting on grass beside a waterway.
The sensing head and moving body outdoors.
A hand holding the robot with a water-quality probe attached.
A water-quality probe mounted alongside the body.
The environmental sensing robot among wet leaves beside a drain.
A field test beside a narrow drainage path.
The long flexible kirigami robot bent across a wood floor.
The finished body bending without a rigid chassis.
The completed robot showing its PET body, drive, and sensors.
The completed environmental sensing device.
1 / 7

I modeled four main versions in SolidWorks and laser-cut each body from PET. The cuts let a flat sheet stretch around the mechanism; the low cost let me recut it whenever a trial exposed a problem.

I added odor, TDS, and ORP sensing, then tested movement and readings in drainage ducts and simulated odorous environments. The point was never movement alone. It was reaching somewhere a person should not need to enter.

Four iterations

Cut, move, sense, repeat.

  1. 01

    Cut a pattern that opens without tearing.

  2. 02

    Fit the body around a moving mechanism.

  3. 03

    Add sensors without stopping the movement.

  4. 04

    Test where water, odor, and tight spaces change the design.

The completed robot showing its PET body, drive, and sensors.
The completed environmental sensing device.
A laser-cut PET sheet with a repeating kirigami pattern.
The cut pattern in a flat PET sheet.
A transparent PET sheet opened along its cut pattern.
Opening the cuts changes how the sheet bends and stretches.
The environmental sensing robot resting on grass beside a waterway.
The sensing head and moving body outdoors.
A hand holding the robot with a water-quality probe attached.
A water-quality probe mounted alongside the body.
The environmental sensing robot among wet leaves beside a drain.
A field test beside a narrow drainage path.
The long flexible kirigami robot bent across a wood floor.
The finished body bending without a rigid chassis.
1 / 7

What carries forward

Cheap enough to rebuild.

This project taught me to build around cost, access, and repair. That same frugal approach now shapes my mobile sensor array. A later robot version will explore accessible on-device AI inference while keeping the hardware practical to reproduce.

What came next / October 2025

The field changed the question.

A teacher at school connected me with a research team at ECUST. They invited me to join experiments tracing how pesticides distribute and dissipate after drone application.

During the October fieldwork, I worked on sampling, data correction, and methodology. It moved me from building a device for hard-to-reach places to asking how measurements should be collected and compared outdoors.

Next project / 02Follow the pesticide fieldwork →