by Jonathan Spalten
Once again, we’d like to shine the spotlight on another alumnus this month to check in after their time at RoboJackets and Georgia Tech, and see where they are now and what part of RoboJackets they brought with them. This month, we’ll be featuring Aman More. Aman completed a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech in 2018. During his time in RoboJackets, he was involved in the BattleBots and RoboCup subteams, but drifted towards BattleBots over time. He built Smitti Werberjagermanjensen, the 3lb ring spinner. He, Cory, and Dustin worked on that robot together and wound up deciding to share an on-campus apartment soon after. This was just the beginning of his RoboJackets journey:
Soon after that, I found myself getting more involved in the planning and support roles than actively leading any projects. I helped reorganize and update the Battlebots pages of the Wiki, and worked with then-PM Ryan Martin in drafting the plan for the 3lb Czar and mentors system. While I was originally a mentor, I found myself thrust into more of a leading role in the spring semester when the elected Czar stepped away from BattleBots.
Aman says the role he best fit into was “the guy who tried to help build the memes and community in BattleBots, helping everyone in the team feel involved and included in whatever was going on.” In particular, he emphasized helping new members connect with older members through those memes. He also says: “I took my role as the person who taught the new members about our long-running memes quite seriously.”
Now, Aman is in Germany, pursuing a Masters in Management and Engineering at RWTH Aachen University. He decided to pursue his Masters after about a year and a half of work in India at his family’s chemicals and engineering company: “I felt I would be able to contribute better if I had a better grasp on the business side of things, and decided to go back to school to learn how to bridge the gap between my technical background from Tech and RJ, and the managerial stuff.” In terms of hobbies, Aman cycles between videogames, self-taught coding, and 3D printing. He also has a passion for LEGO. Pictured below is the new shelf he had to get made in Mumbai just to store his new sets.
We also asked Aman what lessons he thought he learned during his time at RoboJackets, and how they helped him after graduation. He had three he wanted to highlight: experience in the full process from concept to manufactured product, practical design and CAD experience, and, finally, some direction on his passion beyond tech. He says: “RJ was one of the first few places where I actually got to follow the full process of designing and building something from scratch. … Being able to visualize how a part I was designing could be manufactured in the next stages has been invaluable to me, and a large part of that ability came due to my experience doing that at RoboJackets.” He was also able to develop a system of sketching and CAD work that greatly helped him communicate designs to people he’s working with. On his passion, he says:
Coming into Tech, I still wasn’t completely sure about what part of engineering I was most interested in, and I feel it was at RoboJackets where it all finally clicked, and I started my journey towards design and management of design teams. In some ways, you could say that the only reason I am doing my Masters program right now is because the planning/support roles I had in BattleBots made me realize that this is what made me happy.
Finally, we asked him what his favorite memory from RoboJackets was. As usual, it was a hard choice given his wide experiences of technical and meme proliferation work, but he picked his first Motorama:
It wasn’t my first robotics competition – I had done a fair few in high school – but the entire experience of the 14-hour road trip in a cramped van with boxes of robots that we (at best) half-expected would work was new to me. We had poured about 5 months into making these robots, and we didn’t expect any of them to get out of there in one piece. We weren’t worried about them breaking and catching fire; we were looking forward to it. It was a hectic few days, in the best way possible. As a side note, I think that trip was also where Cory, Dustin, and I decided to become roommates going forward.