For this speaker sparked Serra’s idea to apply for a Guinness World Record.
He was at Purdue for a college visit last year where one of the speakers talked to perspective students about how to standout in the application process. Serra, a senior at Kokomo High School, plans to apply this fall.
“She was like ‘If you have a Guinness World Record, put that on there,’” he said.
It got Serra thinking about a robotic arm he built for his YouTube channel. It stood less than 2 inches tall.
“I’d never seen one that was that small,” Serra said. “I thought maybe it’s the smallest, but I didn’t think to look in to it.”
But the line about a world record stuck with him, so he checked into the world-record verification process.
Six months later, Serra, 17, was a Guinness World Record. He has the title of world’s smallest robot arm at 1.75 inches.
“It’s pretty neat,” Serra said. “I don’t really tell people about it, but it’s neat to have it. I don’t like to go out bragging about it or anything.”
The robotic arm consists of 3-D-printed pieces, screws, a circuit board and four motors. Despite its size, there is a gripper on the end of it, capable of picking up small items, like a screw.
The design Serra came up with included moving the motors that work the arms away from the joints. He also had to figure out how to move the motor of the gripper, which would have limited how small it could be.
He did this using what he described in his video as systems of parallel beams and levers.
The result was motors being placed along the side of the robot. The tiny robot moves up and down and swivels.
Serra used computer-aided design software to make a couple prototypes and the final version. The robot is completely 3-D-printed, except for the screws.
Serra said it took him about a month, start to finish, to complete the project.
“Everything pretty much has to be perfect,” he said, adding if even one screw was a millimeter too tight, it wouldn’t work.
Serra uploaded a video showing how he made the robot on his YouTube channel, Build Some Stuff. The video has more than 10,000 views.
His channel has over 12,000 subscribers. One of his videos has over 136,000 views. Most of the content Serra produces is how to build various robotic arms or in one case, a 3-D-printed remote-controlled airboat.
The airboat works on both land and water.
His most complicated creation is probably a Rube Goldberg machine clock.
The clock, hung in his bedroom, features a marble track, dominos and ratchet system. In all, the clock is 176 pieces. Serra made it with his laser cutter.
The marble travels down the clock at the top of the hour, knocking down a set of increasingly larger dominos. The falling dominos trip a spring-loaded ratchet pawl that changes a dial to the next hour.
A rotating elevator carries the marble back to the top of the clock over the course of the hour. A crank resets the dominos.
It’s an overly complicated way to tell time, hence why it’s a Rube Goldberg machine.
Serra’s channel is monetized, meaning he makes money from ads. He has sponsorships that have given him 3-D printers, a laser cutter and standing desk. Companies sent these items to him to feature in videos. In return, he got to keep them.
Serra also has a Patreon — a platform for content creators — where people can subscribe for a monthly fee for additional content.
To get a world record verified is an arduous process and one Serra took upon himself.
It costs money to fly a Guinness World Record representative out from the United Kingdom to verify a record. One can do it themselves, however there is a pages-long list of boxes to check.
One needs witnesses, engineers to measure the robotic arm, cover letters, statements from said witnesses, tools used, design specs, etc.
“You have to include every single possible detail you can imagine,” Serra said.
Andy Baker, co-founder and CEO of AndyMark, was one of three people who verified the measurement of the robot.
Baker works with Serra through FIRST Robotics. Serra is a member of the KHS TechnoKats robotics team. AndyMark is the hub where local robotics teams practice and build their robots.
“It’s a unique but simply effective little robot arm,” Baker said.
Baker is the mentor for the TechnoKats. Typically, mentors help on the computer-aided design side of the robot-build process, however Baker said Serra is better than others at his age with this facet.
“He’s a steady, calm leader of a student,” Baker said. “He does things in a way that makes others gravitate toward him.”
Serra didn’t tell his parents he was going for a world record. At all. Not once during the six-month process did he mention it.
That was until he got it. He showed his parents a QR code and had them scan it.
It took them to the Guinness World Record webpage with his accomplishment.
Neither of his parents are engineers, but his grandfather is. It’s likely where Serra’s passion for building and tinkering comes from.
The night Serra spoke to the Tribune, he was 3-D printing electric stakes for his grandfather’s garden.
“I really just like building things and starting from absolutely nothing, other than a CAD software,” he said.
Serra wants to study either mechanical or electrical engineering in college. The world record should bolster his chances of getting into his desired school.
“I just want to build things and make them work … stuff that works and improves people’s lives is what I’m going for.”
© 2024 the Kokomo Tribune (Kokomo, Ind.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
