In hopes of turning a class project into a cash prize, a group of seven Polytechnic students is working together to design and build an unmanned aircraft vehicle.
A UAV is a small, video-equipped aircraft that is designed to fly without a pilot, said team member Neil Koelle, an engineering senior.
Since the beginning of this semester, the students have been working diligently in and out of class to complete the UAV to have it ready for a competition this spring where they could win up to $9,500 for their design.
By the end of next semester, they will be submitting their design into either the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Region VI Student Conference or the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International Student Unmanned Air Systems Competition.
Both competitions are two-day conferences that reward first-place winners with a cash prize and recognition among other schools.
The military uses UAVs to scope out areas that have been deemed unsafe to enter, and private companies often use them to survey vast land space, Koelle said.
Described as “set it and forget it,” UAVs are programmed to follow certain routes using GPS systems and are manually controlled by pilots that are thousands of miles away.
“A lot of the current UAVs being used in Afghanistan are being piloted by military members in California,” Koelle said.
The students working on the project are all engineering seniors — six aerospace and one mechanical — who were specifically assigned to it by their professors as their senior capstone project.
This project is meant to test whether or not the students can apply what they’ve learned in school to real life mechanics.
Though this is not the first time a Polytechnic group has collaborated on creating a UAV, it is the first time the students have started from scratch.
All seven group members had to create a UAV design and then vote on the best one to be created by the group.
Koelle, who had the winning design, said he likes that the group was given the opportunity to create its own design, rather than following a template.
“It’s cool to start from nothing and see it come to life,” he said.
The students are currently still in the infancy stages of production, having only recently decided the exact measurements and materials needed for the design. They hope to have the UAV ready to fly by January.
Though the students are forced to give up much of their free time, they said they feel as though they’re learning valuable lessons for their futures.
“It’s a good hands-on learning experience,” engineering senior Willis Flores said. “I’m learning a lot to put toward my future job.”
Junior Mejia, another engineering senior, said he really enjoyed the teamwork aspect of the project.
“I like that you get to work with people you know and that we get to do stuff that we’re actually interested in,” he said.
Reach the reporter at danielle.legler@asu.edu
