“UT-D2! He’s real!” Exclamations of this could be heard echoing all around Comet-Con, UTD’s take on Comic-Con. This year, the annual campus-wide event took place on March 26, and was an all-day extravaganza from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Software engineering senior Keaton Ylanan took the event as an opportunity to debut his very own R2 unit: UT-D2.
K. Ylanan built the robot together with his father, Neil Ylanan, over the course of the last two to three years. As K.Ylanan is in his senior year, his aim was to get UT-D2 finished in time for his last Comet-Con.
“It was really cool to have [UT-D2] here for Keaton’s senior year, and have it be a kind of culmination of his time here and the friends he’s made,” N. Ylanan said.
Both K. Ylanan and his father took great pleasure in showing their creation off to the world at the con.
“That’s the fun: seeing him going around and entertaining the fans,” N. Ylanan said.
It took the Ylanans between two and three years to complete the building process of UT-D2. While some of the droid’s parts were 3D-printed, others were cut from wood and metal using a CNC machine to automate the process and carve with lasers. These parts were then put together and painted using car paints.
“Well, that’s a gross simplification of two to three years of work,” K. Ylanan said, after describing this process.
The program for the droid however, is pre-built from an old software from 2000. N. Ylanan used this very software to build a droid not too many years after it came out. Having no prior robotics or engineering background, but as a self-claimed ‘huge Star Wars nerd’, he was fueled by pure galactic passion to work on this project.
“My dad has an R2 that’s about as old as me. There’s a lot of legacy software that still works exactly the same now,” K. Ylanan said.
The Ylanans got hold of the software from the website of the community who call themselves Astromech. Astromech describe themselves as an international community who build their own replica robots from the Star Wars universe. The group build everything from spaceships to robots, and their website contains all the information one could need in order to build an astromech droid for themselves. Another Star Wars fan catalog, Wookieepedia, describes astromech droids as a type of repair droid that serves as an automated mechanic on starships.
“Star Wars fans are crazy,” K. Ylanan said, “any robot from Star Wars has probably been made.”
N. Ylanan actually brought his first R2 unit to Comet-Con in 2022, back when his son was in his freshman year. It was here that the duo formed the idea to create a unique astromech in UTD colors. And thus, UT-D2 was born. Four years on, the droid was presented at the 14th annual Comet-Con.
Shruti Gupta, president of SUAAB — the organization responsible for Comet-Con — said of the event, “every year it’s grown into something bigger and bigger, and it’s definitely something that we see students really anticipating.”
This student anticipation of an unmissable event on the UTD calendar cannot be more evident than through K. Ylanan’s dedication to building his robot.
“For a while, every single Friday we would put everything aside and just work on the robot,” K. Ylanan said. “It’s a good time to bond. Everyone should have some hobby like that.”
As for the future of UTD’s very own Star Wars sidekick, K. Ylanan wants to show him off even more.
“Maybe it can be TEMOC’s little sidekick,” said N. Ylanan. “I think he’s well received here as a mascot.”
