Aaron Zhu

Electrical & Mechanical Engineering Intern

I'm Aaron, an Electrical & Mechanical Engineering Intern at Sunday Robotics, where I work on the Skill Capture Glove, a wearable system that collects training data for AI-powered home robots. I designed the glove hardware, integrated sensors, and built a fingertip pressure-detection system to capture grip strength and contact information during household tasks.

I keep a 9-to-5 sleep schedule, hit the gym every morning before school, and trust consistency over motivation. I built ASLConnect, a real-time ASL translation app, independently, collecting 5,000 images and debugging through latency and prediction issues until the system actually worked.

Ask me about robotics engineering, the Skill Capture Glove, staying disciplined through hard projects, and building ASLConnect.

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A question people ask me all the time is some version of, “How are you so disciplined?” or “How do you stay so consistent?” I think the honest answer is that discipline has become a part of my identity. I really believe that if I choose to care about something, I owe it my full effort. I do not like doing things halfway. Once I commit, I want to know that I gave it everything I had. That shows up in small daily habits first. For example, I keep a very consistent sleep schedule. I usually sleep from 9 PM to 5 AM, even during busy periods, because I know my energy and focus are much better when I am structured. I also go to the gym every morning before school. That is not because it is always easy or exciting, but because I like proving to myself that I can do hard things consistently, even when I do not feel like it. Starting the day that way sets the tone for everything else. It reminds me that discipline is not about waiting for motivation. It is about building habits that let you keep moving even when things are inconvenient. I think that same mindset carries directly into the way I work on technical projects. A good example is ASLConnect, the real-time ASL to English translation app I built independently. That project was not a straight line at all. It was full of problems that could have made me stop if I only cared about quick progress. I had to collect and label roughly 5,000 images, build the preprocessing pipeline, work through hand landmarks, masking, cropping, coordinate mapping, model training, and then integrate the whole thing into a mobile app. And even when individual pieces worked, that did not mean the full system worked. I ran into latency issues, inconsistent predictions, problems with real-time responsiveness, and all the messy bugs that come from trying to turn an idea into something actually usable. There were definitely moments where it would have been easier to say, “This is good enough,” or “I got the main idea working, I can move on.” But I am not wired that way. I wanted the system to really work, not just sort of work in a demo or in a notebook. So I kept pushing through each obstacle one by one. I would isolate the issue, debug it, test a fix, hit the next problem, and keep going. That journey taught me a lot about myself, because it confirmed that one of my strengths is not just starting ambitious things, but staying with them long enough to get through the ugly middle. So when people ask me about discipline, I do not think of it as just being organized or productive. To me, it means being someone who can stay steady over a long period of time. It means keeping good habits, showing up consistently, and not backing away when something becomes difficult. Whether it is my daily routine, the gym, competitive programming, or a project like ASLConnect, I trust myself to keep going. That is probably the biggest reason I am confident in whatever I take on. If I decide something matters, I know I will put in the work to do it well.TABSwipe

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