Hi, I'm Robin Li!

Mechatronics Engineer with a passion and experience designing and building electronic and software systems.

I am a recent graduate Mechatronics Engineer. I enjoy working with electronics, software, and everything in between.

During my degree, I spent most of my time outside of classes being involved with Monash Motorsport, where I designed and developed custom PCBs and electrical systems. Before that, I was a Student Test Engineer at Bosch, writing test scripts and testing automotive products.

I learn the most when I tinker with things. My most recent project is the design of a traction inverter for a Formula SAE electric vehicle. This is the most challenging project I have worked on, involving power electronics, control systems and high-speed layout.

Apart from being an Engineer, I am also a home barista, home cook, a motorsport enthusiast and an unprofitable Poker player.

Experience

Electrical Systems Engineer

Monash Motorsport

March 2023 - December 2024

Monash Motorsport is a student team that designs, manufactures and races open-wheel electric racecars. During my time on the team, some of the things that I'm proud to have accomplished are:

  • designed, assembled, and validated 5+ custom PCBs for a Formula Student race car, to ensure high reliability, and compliance to competition rulesets.
  • streamlined PCB assembly procedure, quality control guidelines, along with test specifications for custom PCBs in the car, introducing industry-standard practices, such as IPC-610, which were previously unexplored within the team.
  • developed a Python-based Graphical User Interface, to serve as a user-friendly dashboard for visualisation of real-time and historical data logged by the Battery Management System, as well as enabling intuitive control of the Battery Management System

Student Reliability Test Engineer

Bosch

December 2021 - November 2022

I took on a year-long, full-time position at Bosch the summer of 2021. Looking back, it was a very rewarding year, where I:

  • worked in a cross-disciplinary international team on the design and validation of a Body Control Module, with a focus on developing test scripts for automated test systems to validate product reliability in adherence to industry standards and customer specification.
  • employed Python and Pandas to perform data analysis on extensive test result datasets collected, ranging up to terabytes, and communicated findings through interactive data visualisation.
  • developed multiple test data and report processing tools, which accelerated the workflow for engineers and technicians engaged in other projects.

My Projects

Custom SiC traction inverter

For the final year project of my honours degree, I designed a Custom SiC Traction Inverter with my project partner. The 120kW traction inverter is a key component of the electric powertrain on our FSAE vehicle, enabling precise power and torque distribution to the 4 individual motors.

This project is by far the most difficult that I've attempted, it challenged me to acquire extensive knowledge on power electronics, multilayer PCB layout, circuit simulation and so much more.

Co-founding a computer business

In 2020, I started a business selling computers with my friend, we called it Carpio Computers. The business model was simple, we sourced off-the-shelf components from various sources at lower than market rate, built desktop PCs with a strong focus on quality and aesthetics, then sold them at prices much lower than what major retailers were selling for.

Despite accumulating over 30 customers, making tens of thousands of dollars in revenue, the value of the company was much more in providing learning opportunity than in making a profit. We ceased operations about a year and a half later.

This Website!

I wanted a personal portfolio website to showcase my past work and projects, so I learnt how to build one.

I built this website with Jekyll, HTML, SCSS and JS, and it is hosted on Github pages.