At the 2025 Engineering Project Expo, students and visitors crowded around a curious creation: a compact trailer topped with a rooftop tent. With storage below and sleeping space above, the prototype looked like something between a bike camper and a tiny mobile cabin. By the end of the afternoon, it had sparked plenty of questions and conversation.
As seniors, mechanical engineering students Luke Douglas, Joshua Le, Yuka Iwashita and Roha Ali took on the challenge of designing the Micro Mobile Homes R3 prototype, sponsored by Micro Mobile Homes, a Nevada startup. The project has since wrapped up, and all four have graduated.
The company originally envisioned a shelter that could sell for less than $1,000 and serve as a solution for homelessness. But once it became a dealer for Roofnest, a rooftop tent manufacturer, the project shifted toward outdoor enthusiasts. The team’s design had to integrate the tent while keeping cost and portability in mind.
“It was an evolving idea,” Douglas said. “Our goal was to double the usable space compared to the tent alone and make it towable with an e-bike.”
From Idea to Prototype
The students started with brainstorming sessions and interviews with outdoor enthusiasts. They quickly realized they needed to balance weight, aerodynamics and storage capacity. The finished micromobile home weighed about 140 pounds, with a maximum payload of 300, and could store up to 50 pounds of food.
“Everything can be bought off the shelf,” Le said. “We wanted it to be affordable and realistic. I tested it with an e-bike, and it worked well.”
At the Expo, Ali climbed inside the tent to show how the space could comfortably fit multiple people, giving visitors a better sense of how the design might be used on the trail.
Design challenges included stability and leveling. The team experimented with wheel chocks and jacks to keep the trailer steady, repurposed items like furniture legs, and even used spacers as alignment pins. They also had to consider factors such as marketing and product appeal, giving them experience that went beyond their usual coursework.
“This project gave us a taste of marketing,” Douglas said. “We had to think about size and features in terms of marketability, not just function.”
Growth and Next Steps
Because their sponsor came from a business background, the team sometimes had to bridge different ways of thinking.
“It was sometimes difficult to communicate technical details,” Ali said. “We learned that open communication works best.”
Through the yearlong effort, the students discovered not just the strengths of the design but of each other. Douglas brought camping experience from growing up in Washington’s Cascades. Ali excelled at outreach and liaison work. Iwashita focused on specifications, while Le pushed the product design side.
“I’m proud of the work we’ve done and how far we’ve grown,” Ali said. “We were a good team and learned how to communicate well with each other.”
Though the micromobile home was ultimately tailored to outdoor enthusiasts, the sponsor still sees potential for humanitarian use. The idea is to sell to campers and e-bike users first, then reinvest profits into affordable housing or disaster relief models.
Sponsor Rickey Johnson of Micro Mobile Homes traveled from Nevada to attend the Expo, where he saw visitors climbing in, testing the space and having fun with the design. “The whole thing has multiple purposes,” he said. “It’s slick, and people really responded to it.” Afterward, he picked up the prototype and took it camping in Morro Bay. For the team, watching the design head out on its first trip was the best validation.
“We had to think about what we could actually bring into the real world,” Le said. “That was the biggest takeaway.”
The team is carrying those lessons forward. Douglas is starting a rotational engineering program, while Le is exploring roles in product design engineering. Iwashita is continuing her studies with a graduate degree in product design. Ali is also in graduate school and leading Cal Poly’s heating, ventilation, air conditioning and refrigeration club.
Wherever they go, their senior project gave them more than a prototype. It showed them how creativity, communication and teamwork can turn an ambitious idea into something tangible, and maybe even marketable.
By Emily Slater
