Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Engineering Design Workshop 2012

In July of 2012, The Edgerton Center hosted the annual Engineering Design Workshop. The program brings in high school students from around the world to work in teams on a project of their choice. This year the program had 24 kids and 6 mentors, which turned out to be a pretty good ratio. In addition to the mentors, the workshop had Ed Moriarty and John McGoldrick as general overseers and sources of infinite wisdom.
Ed talking with the kids on the first day
 My group decided to make an autonomous vehicle with the final goal of having it deliver caffeinated beverages to Ed. This goal was never completely achieved, but the wall-avoiding robot we ended up with worked well and everyone involved gained valuable experience.

A few photos along the way:

Yashasvi sitting on David's group's project
People doing things with stuff
Ed skyping in from Alaska for design review and updates
JDOB/UAF/ASRA says hi!
John the shop safety specialist
my first steering assembly
Rolling chassis
Intermediate step: RC vehicle
After staring at the vehicle for a few hours we discovered that unnamed student
had used digital pins when he should have used analog pins
Making the vehicle 'safer'
Battleship group
Single-fan hovercraft group
Batmobile group and the resulting tricycle
Dual-fan hovercraft group
Autonomous vehicle group

And so another Engineering Design Workshop came to a close and some of us went back to a normal sleep schedule and some did not. At the same time as the workshop, three of the six mentors (Jackie, David, and myself) were also preparing to test an underwater glider in Alaska and left for testing the day after the workshop ended. I'll post about that in a few days when I sort through the thousands of photos and videos that were taken on the trip. In the meantime, here's a preview:

$50,000 ROV catches dinner

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