Hi, my name is

Matthew
Tavares

I am a mechatronics engineer, team builder, and system architect.

I currently live and work out of Austin and Houston Texas.

I have a passion for engineering, science, and technology.

About Me

My name is Matthew Tavares and I am a multidisciplinary mechatronics engineer and roboticist. I started building robots at the age of nine, won BattleBots IQ and a position at Hanson Robotics before reaching eighteen, and founded the UTDallas combat robotics group that continues to compete to this day. For 7 years I developed ocean bottom seismic recorders and geophysical equipment that had to stand up to the harshest conditions on earth. I have just finished 3 years working with Paul Bernhard Exhibits on the Wiess Energy Hall at the Houston Museum of Science. My current goals include spending time with my fiancé, building a new 250lb combat robot, working on interesting projects with talented people, and eventually buying a house. I have a passion for all things creative and I am ready to help you with your next project! Connect with me via social media, view my past work , or contact me now if you're ready to get started!

Portfolio

The Blender

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Big Bit Exhibit

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Drill Floor Exhibit

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Subsea Exhibit

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Zeno Robot

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Hydrophone Tester

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Julio Robot

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Blender Mini

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Flat Pack Chair

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Ice Press

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Aleph Null

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Seismic Battery Charger

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Data Taxi

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Other Projects

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Micro R/C Hovercraft

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Download Résumé

Advantages

3D Printed Prototyping

In-house parts printing in a variety of rigid plastics and flexible elastomers.

Marketing

Get the word out with a product webpage, renderings, or documentation.

Design Reliability

Battle-hardened design experience for products that live long and prosper.

Mobile Worker

When time is of the essence, I can travel and work in remote locations with little notice.

Let's Get In Touch

Freelancer Services

Send me an elevator pitch, describe your problem, or ask me to sign a non-disclosure agreement. I can advise you immediatley about feasability and create a project proposal.

Job Inquiries

I have just finished a long term project with Paul Bernhard Exhibit and am very interested in hearing about new opportunities. My current availability starts in August 2018

Anything Else

Request information about my past work, ask me to come speak in a classroom, or anything else. I typically jump at any opportunity to share my passion of science and technology with others.

Email Me

Project Details:

Competitions: Battlebots, BattlebotsIQ, BotsIQ, and RoboGames
Peak Positions: Captain, Mechanical Design, Electrical Design, Driver
Date: 2004 - Present

Project Description:

The Blender is an award winning combat robot that has competed in various Battlebots, BotsIQ, and robot combat competitions from 2004 - 2015. Weighing in at 120 pounds, the Blender is a full body spinner, rotating a 30 inch bladed titanium shell at 1000 rpm for anyone brave enough to turn it on. Beginning life at the Richardson High School Robotics Magnet in 2004, the original Blender did well in it's first Battlebots IQ competition, taking home the coveted Coolest Robot award in it's first year. After this and every competition, the robot was taken back to the drawing board and improved. Our constant iterating let us take us take 1st place in both 2007 and 2009. In 2008 the Blender design went to college with the introduction of the Blender Mini and the UTDallas Combat Robitcs Team. After winning the 120 lb high school division twice the the 120lb Blender design was brought to UTD to compete in even harder competitions. Today, the UTDallas Combat Robotics team Matt created continues to compete and the Blender most recently was awarded quarter finalist at RoboGames 2015 and 1st at BotsIQ 2011.

Project Details:

Client: Hanson Robotics
Roles: Electrical Design Lead, Mechanical Design, Manufacturing
Date: 2007

Project Description:

A walking and talking 17-inch-tall, 4.5-pound humanoid robot boy named Zeno. The prototype reperesented the first intelligent "conversational robot" and was intended to be the first of Hanson's "Robokind" line of personal, interactive bots. Zeno had 12 motors in the head that provided Zeno with a wide range of expressions and 18 motors used in the body for walking, talking, and interacting with the enviroment. Behind one of its eyes was a camera that the robot used to recognize faces and human expressions. The robot A.I. was driven by scripted content, fuzzy-logic, and voice recognition to keep users fed with relevant and engaging information.

Project Description:

The Infinity Seismic Hydrophone Tester ruggedly tests a vast and growing library of hydrophone sensors for geophysical exploration companies around the world. Hydrophones are underwater microphones sometimes used in reflection seismology to map sea-bed oil and mineral deposits. By testing hydrophones as they are deployed and recovered, proactive care can be taken to prevent and remove incorrect data from seismic shots. The quick-changing hydrophone sealing adapters, a pressure washable exterier, and mud-resistant redundant test sensors are some of the reasons the Checkmate Marine is the industries foremost hydrophone tester.

Project Details:

Client: Vercét LLC and Infinity Seismic
Services: Mechanical Design, Acoustic Research
Date: 2010

Project Description:

Julio is a fully expressive humanoid robot that was built for the exhibition "Souls & Machines" at the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid, Spain. Julio was a collaboration with Grammy award winning musician David Byrne who voiced the robot's musical soundtrack. The exhibition performance was designed to show off the full range of Julio's facial expressions during a 5 minute scripted loop.

Project Details:

Client: Hanson Robotics
Services: Electrical Design, Manufacturing
Date: 2008

Project Description:

The Blender Mini was the first of the UT-Dallas combat robots. Starting a new team is tricky so a smaller 15lb 2500 RPM full body spinner was made. The smaller size and lower cost allowed technologies such as brushless motors, 3D Printed chassis, lithium batteries, and exotic titanium shell shapes to be tested out. Winning 2nd place in the 2008 15lb college division of Bots IQ and competing again with a rebuilt chassis in 2009, the Blender Mini carried nearly 1700 Joules of energy in a fully spun up shell and had three times the rpm of the 120lb Blender.

Project Details:

Team: UTDallas Battlebots Group, UTDallas IEEE Robotics Society
Roles: Team Captain & Founder, Design Lead, Driver
Date: 2008 - 2009

Project Description:

A strong and abstract chair made in Matt's garage but designed for volume manufacturing and flat pack shipping. Two complete chairs can be made on a cnc wood router out of one 4ft x 8ft sheet of plywood. The only tools needed for assembly are wood glue, nails, clamps, and finish. The design was done in SolidWorks and is equation driven for quick modifications. Solidworks design time was four hours.

Project Details:

Client: Tavares Labs (Personal)
Roles: All
Date: 2014

Project Description:

The Ice Press takes large blocks of ice and rapidly melts them into perfect 70mm ice spheres for use in fine spirits. When compared to other ice shapes, spherical geometry results in longer-lasting and slower melting ice, keeping your drink cold and yet not watered down.

Project Details:

Client: HG Supply Company through Vercét LLC
Services: Mechanical Design and Manufacturing
Date: 2013

Project Description:

Aleph Null is a humanoid character robot consisting of a fully expressive human-like face and gestural arms. Aleph uses a combination of computer vision, speech recognition, and facial expressions to simulate the art of human to human conversation. Aleph has appeared on an episode of "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" portraying a precursory robot to the terminator.

Project Details:

Client: Hanson Robotics, Sarah Connor Chronicles
Services: Electrical Design, Mechanical Design, Manufacturing
Date: 2007

Project Description:

A multi-chemistry ten channel battery charger, capable of auto-sensing and charging the battery packs used in a selection of seismic equipment. The gang battery charger is ruggedly designed for the in-field realities of the seismic geophysical industry, with repairable and off-the-shelf parts used anywhere possible. Ten individually fused and controllable channels provide accurate charging irrespective of connected battery state or cell chemistry. A universally readable and color-blind friendly silkscreened user guide and channel status lights indicate each charging channel's charging status.

Project Details:

Client: Infinity Seismic through Vercet LLC
Services: Mechanical Design Lead
Date: 2012

Project Description:

The Data Taxi is a lightweight data transport device for in-field collection of seismic data from I/O RSR seismic data recorders. RSR recorder units are laid out in grids connected to geophones for recording seismic shots, and users move from recorder to recorder with a Data Taxi, downloading the seismic data from each unit as they go. At the Data Taxi's peak, over 230 units where being used on all seven continents under the notoriously tough seismic field conditions. People liked to use them as hammers so the units inevitably broke. I diagnosed and repaired all damaged Data Taxis for two years before writing repair documentation and training an off-site facility to take over both the electrical and mechanical repairs. The large amount of failure analysis performed in this duty continues to imform my design desisions to this day.

Project Details:

Client: SES by Vercét LLC
Services: Repairs, Documentation, Instructor 1-2 a week
Date: 2009 - 2012

Project Description:

An example of my earlier work, I made a micro remote controllable hovercraft when I was 13 years old. About the size of a cell phone, the hovercraft was made of balsa wood and styrofoam chassis held the pager motors that spun propellers made out of a Dr. Pepper soda can. The skirt was made from thin plastic grocery bag and the electronics where "borrowed" from an RC pocket tank.

Project Details:

Client: Impressing the 7th Grade Female Classmates (Didn't Work)
Role: All
Date: 2001

Project Details:

Client: The Houston Museum of Natural Science and PBExhibits
Roles: Mechanical and Electrical Engineering Lead and All Programming
Date: 2015 - 2016

Project Description:

The giant counter-rotating drill bit is one of the defining features of the new Wiess Energy Hall at The Houston Museum of Natural Science. Matthew Tavares co-lead a team to design, erect, test, and install the 26-foot tall, 16-foot diameter permanent exhibit on budget and ahead of schedule. The custom and friction drive mechanism and bearing arrangement Matt proposed and engineered to solve the unique counter-rotating problem allows the entire 2200-pound spinning mass to counter-rotate effortlessly and safely above the audience’s head 24/7 365 days a year. Everything was designed to mechanically self-adjust in a shock-absorbing fashion as there was no opportunity in the ambitious 6-month timeline for a scale friction drive prototype to be built or tested. Working closely with co-lead Kevin Carpenter, lead fabricator Aaron Rice, and his fabricator team, the massive structure was welded and assembled over 3 months in full scale at the Austin shop while parts were machined and assembled for the friction drive and rotating carriage assemblys. On the first and every mechanism test the friction drive system worked perfectly. Next to no adjustments or incidents have occurred to this day with the next major preventative maintenance predicted to be in 2020.

Project Details:

Client: The Houston Museum of Natural Science and PBExhibits
Roles: Mechanism Design Lead, Electrical Design Lead, and Programming Lead for the Top Drive, Roughneck, and Hydraracker
Date: 2016 - 2017

Project Description:

The Simulated Drilling Floor Exhibit is the first thing you see when the elevator doors open to the Houston Museum of Natural Science’s new Wiess Energy Hall. It is designed to simulate the experience of standing on an active oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico as accurately as possible. A working half-scale Top Drive, Roughneck, and Hydraracker where designed, fabricated, and robotized in front of a massive 55-foot curved LED wall. The 3000lb Top Drive moves over 4 feet up and down as it pushes a spinning pipe into the drilling floor while the Roughneck extends and contracts, torqueing new pipe segments onto the end as it goes.

Project Details:

Client: The Houston Museum of Natural Science and PBExhibits
Roles: Mechanical and Electrical Engineering Lead & All Programming
Date: 2015 - 2017

Project Description:

The Reservoirs & Production exhibit section of the new Wiess Energy Hall highlights subsea technology and features a full size and industry donated ROV and WASP units as well as a BOP wellhead interactive game on a simulated ocean bottom. The original hydraulically actuated arms and camera control have been retrofitted to use pneumatics for audience safety. Using joystick controls, the audience takes control of the arm to play the simulated ocean bottom wellhead interactive game.