How a robotic car changed my life by Deacon

How a robotic car changed my life by Deacon - October 2026 Scholarship Essay

In my Principles of Engineering class, we were tasked with designing a self-driving car out of VEX parts. The goal was simple on paper: build a small car that could move on its own and handle a set path. Most of the class started with the basic drive layouts from the instructions. I wanted to see if there was a better way, so I treated the project like a real design problem instead of a checklist.

I personally had fun with it because there was no single correct answer. I looked up how full-size cars turn, how torque gets split between wheels, and why some robots spin out when they try to corner. That research pulled me into differentials, gear ratios, and the best way to turn in a given scenario. A higher gear ratio gave more torque but less speed, A lower ratio did the opposite. A differential could let the outside wheel travel farther than the inside wheel in a turn, which mattered even on a small VEX chassis. I had not thought about those tradeoffs before the project. Once I did, the car stopped being a pile of parts and started being a set of choices.

I tested more than one layout. Some versions were too slow to finish the path. Others turned too wide or lost grip when both sides of the drivetrain fought each other. I kept notes on what failed, changed one thing at a time, and ran it again. That process is what sparked my creativity. I ended up with a car my teacher had never seen before. It was not perfect, but it was mine. The design came from research and trial runs, not from copying the first example in the packet. Hearing that it was different mattered less than knowing I could explain why I built it that way.

Now I am in a robotics class, further deepening my understanding of these robots. The car project gave me a base. Robotics asks me to build on it: sensors, control, structure, and how each subsystem affects the others. The class feels connected to that first car instead of like a brand-new subject. I already know what it feels like to own a design and defend the choices in it.

This is also when I decided to look into engineering as an actual career. Before the project, engineering was a class I liked. After it, I wanted to know what the job looked like past high school. I started reading about different branches and noticed that the part I cared about most was not only the frame and the gears. It was making the machine respond. The car had to take an input, make a decision, and move in a controlled way. That pointed me toward computer engineering.

I asked my teacher what computer engineering actually entailed. He walked me through the mix of hardware and software: circuits, processors, embedded systems, and code that has to run on a real device with real limits. That matched how I had already been thinking. On the VEX car, the mechanical build and the control logic were useless without each other. A strong drivetrain still needed a program that told it when to turn, how fast to go, and how to correct itself. A good program could not save a drivetrain that was geared wrong. Computer engineering sat in the middle of those two problems, and I loved it.

The more I looked into the major, the more the car project felt like a small version of the work. Computer engineers design systems where software and hardware depend on each other. They deal with constraints: power, timing, weight, and what the machine is allowed to do. They also test, fail, and revise. I had already done a simple version of that loop in class, and I wanted the harder version.

Now I will be going to college to become a computer engineer, all because of a little robotic car. The project did not hand me a career plan. It gave me proof that I like open-ended builds, that I will research a problem before I settle on a design, and that I care about both the machine and the logic running it. Principles of Engineering made the first car possible. Robotics is pushing that interest further. Computer engineering is the path that ties it together. A class assignment built from VEX parts is the reason I know what I want to study.