Three teams made Roomba like vacuum cleaners, complete with 3-D printed wheels and laser-cut bodies. Photo by Glissette Santana on Flickr.

Virtual reality headsets, 3-D printed hammers and robotic vacuums lined the showcase table at Make 1’s student showcase Thursday night at The Idea Center at Miami Dade College in downtown Miami.

Make1, a 16-week product design and prototyping program run by The Idea Center, culminated in a student showcase featuring projects from 16 Make1 students. Knight Foundation supports The Idea Center.

“This class is about prototyping, learning how to make things,” Make1 program lead Alex Uribe said in his opening remarks. “If you think about it, hardware is kind of having this renaissance right now and it’s coming back. We’re trying to bring that to students in the community.”

Rodolfo Saccoman, CEO and co-founder of Admobilize, a company that analyzes face, gesture and vehicle recognition technology, gave the keynote speech. Photo by Glissette Santana.

Alain Leon, a Make1 student, said his girlfriend encouraged him to apply for the class.

“I learned how much I can drive myself when I’m working on things that are really cool and you believe you can achieve them,” Leon said. “Here you have a group that you can achieve them with.”

Leon said he hopes to use the skills he learned in the class, such as working with computer-aided design programs, to develop his own projects, such as a motorized skateboard.

Students attended the classes, which started March 1 and met Tuesdays and Thursdays from 6-8:30 p.m., and worked on projects that took taught them “one step at a time” through tasks, such as product design and prototyping, Leon said.

Uribe and program instructor Werner Blumenthal devised the idea for the final project, a Roomba-style automatic vacuum cleaner, and students constructed the project using materials and equipment provided in class, including 3-D printers and laser cutters.

At the showcase, Rodolfo Saccoman, co-founder and CEO of AdMobilize, a company that uses face, gesture and vehicle recognition technology to analyze mood, gave a keynote speech encouraging anyone wanting to break into the tech industry to not give up.

“If people tell you pivoting [direction] is bad, look at most technology companies today,” said Saccoman, who competed on the first season of “Shark Tank,” the ABC reality series about budding entrepreneurs.  “Most of them pivoted before becoming successful.”

Leon said that his experience in the program helped cultivate skills that he otherwise wouldn’t have acquired, such as working with CAD programs.

“Because of that,” Leon said, “I’m already thinking of ideas for my next project.”

Glissette Santana is an editorial intern at Knight Foundation. Email her at [email protected] and tweet her @glissettetweets.