Project Goal: Design and fabricate a steel-polyethylene composite armor plate that balances performance, weight, cost, durability and comfort.

Spartan Armor Systems wanted a level III body armor that would stand out among the competition in a growing market. Traditional steel armor is cost-effective and simple to manufacture, but its heavy weight can cause user fatigue and other prolonged physical problems.

The hybrid armor plate weighs less than five pounds and measures just over 1/2-inch thick. The HAP is the first composite plate to combine ballistic-rated steel and polyethylene to create a stronger and lighter body armor.

HAP was tested against the performance standards established by the National Institute of Justice for level III protection: NIJ-Standard-0101.06. Level III offers protection against basic rifle threats and is certified to stop a 7.62x51mm M80 Ball NATO round, which has a mass of 9.6g and a velocity of 847 meters per second. The test determined the optimal configuration of the HAP, balancing spall (fragmentation) mitigation and impact resistance.

Project Goal: Design, build and bench test a compact laser diode-based metrology module that can illuminate a stream of water droplets and record the reflected signal from each droplet (or group of droplets) over a given time interval using a suitable solid-state detector.

The current metrology solution to precisely locate tin droplets in the primary chamber is bulky and difficult to service, which reduces the use of lithography machines.

This new laser diode-based metrology module, or LDMM, creates a stream of submillimeter water droplets and then detects the position of these droplets using a laser diode-based optical metrology system. A fast, solid-state detector analyzes the reflection of visible laser light from the surface of the droplet. Once the system detects a droplet, it sends a timing signal to an external source, such as an LED or laser, that could theoretically intercept the position of the droplet.

New software provides a graphical user interface, and a host computer allows the user to operate the LDMM's droplet generation characteristics.

Project Goal: Design and build a sturdier, more reliable and longer-lasting anchor for low-profile gastrostomy tubes.

Patients unable to orally ingest food or medications use gastrostomy tubes to receive the necessary nutrients and treatment to survive. Currently, a silicone balloon is used to secure the device in the stomach. Unfortunately, the balloon requires regular inflation checks for safety due to the permeability of the material in an acidic environment.

This redesigned g-tube anchor employs a hollow silicone disk to prevent premature or undesired removal of the tube. An insertion rod stretches the silicone disk for easy insertion and removal. Once the tube is inserted, the rod is removed, and the silicone anchor returns to its original disk shape. The anchor retains integrity throughout its indicated time of use without requiring adjustments or inflation checks.

This design ensures that the g-tube stays in place and remains functional for its full lifespan, and it can be molded for low-cost, high-volume manufacturing.

Project Goal: Design and build an autonomous machine that can systematically torque large quantities of fasteners, and provide a user interface that allows the system to be programmed to operate a wide range of assembly configurations.

At Raytheon, installing fasteners is a manual process. A typical assembly has 90-200 fasteners, each needing to be sequentially torqued to a specific value and commonly requiring a team of operators two to six hours to complete. Existing automatic torque tools lack the required control and accuracy. Although robots are good at automating repetitive tasks, they run into trouble when the context of the application lacks consistency. A different type of robot could solve these key challenges.

In this design, the graphical user interface allows input and editing of assembly parameters, generates a pre-run simulation/graphic, provides troubleshooting capabilities, generates documentation and other advanced functions. A gantry system moves the custom-built torque appliance in the x, y and z directions. Cameras employ machine vision algorithms‚ allowing the system to localize and adjust to the fasteners’ true position in real time.

The modular design and robust control software provide a reliable autonomous torque system that can be scaled to larger and more complex applications.

Project Goal: Design and develop a small, portable infrared beacon (STrOBe) that can be deployed by drone and used to mark targets in the field.

Short-wave infrared, or SWIR, beacons are used by the military to mark targets for destruction, for landing zones and for locating allied troops to prevent friendly fire. The team designed a device to mark a target in the field by emitting a laser at 1550nm, which would be detectable to those equipped with SWIR vision technology.

The STrOBe beacon is small, portable, remotely programmable, rugged and bright enough to be seen from a distance. The device is controlled remotely via Bluetooth connectivity to a custom-designed app that powers the beacon and changes the pulse repetition rate. The app can control up to three individual STrOBe devices.

The STrOBe pulses at 1550nm at a rate that can be adjusted from continuous wave to 100 Hz. The beacon’s Bluetooth-enabled module connects to the microcontroller that interfaces with the app to control the operational modes of the SWIR emitters. The custom-designed housing can withstand a 6-foot drop onto different types of terrain and land upright on a 45-degree slope. The curved architecture allows for an optical assembly that provides uniform intensity over a near-hemispherical field of view.

Project Goal: Design and build a rover prototype that can autonomously navigate a wind farm to collect and extract data from wind turbine footage.

Wind farms are often situated in remote locations with turbines spread across a large land area. As the world shifts to renewable energy, demand for autonomous surveyor robots will grow to help monitor and improve efficiency of wind farms.

This rover, based on an electric all-terrain vehicle, includes a gimbal-mounted camera to record wind turbines, weather instrumentation to measure wind speed and direction, a GPS module attached to a Raspberry Pi 4 to generate a rover navigation, and a TFMini Plus LiDAR module for obstacle avoidance. The rover is powered by two 12V 50Ah lithium batteries, a monocrystalline 120-Watt solar panel and a solar charge controller. This equipment was assembled and integrated onto the ATV frame with software that allows the rover to traverse along a navigational way-point path to collect turbine video and weather conditions autonomously.

An external software package was created to process the collected footage to determine the rotational speed of the turbine’s blades. The processed data is used to monitor acceptable turbine performance and improve wind turbine efficiency.

Project Goal: Develop a process that produces continuously variable hardness of material during the 3D printing of a vibration isolator.

Printing plastic with continuously varying hardness has potential applications in the design of vibration isolators. Current designs involve rubber isolators and metal mounts, but the bonding seams between metal and rubber tend to separate after prolonged use, increasing the failure rate of the isolator. A new process makes it possible to create a single-piece vibration isolator that has a lower failure rate than those currently produced. Also, isolators printed with adjustable hardness allow for fine-tuning the isolator to be more effective at specific frequencies.

The printhead of the MakerGear M3-SE 3D was modified to include a three-inlet nozzle with one outlet and supporting hardware that allows simultaneous mixing of high-, medium- and low-hardness filaments. In the custom design, the filaments are fed into the hotend at different rates to vary the mixture, and therefore the hardness, of the extruded material. In the printing process, the user creates a G-code file using slicer software. The file is run through a custom post-processor, and then this code is sent to the printer. The custom G-code contains commands that change printed plastic hardness depending on print-head coordinates throughout the process.

The combination of the modified printer and the custom software enables printing parts with continuously variable plastic hardness.

Project Goal: Develop an easily transportable real-time optical tracking system to investigate suspicious vehicles at domestic critical infrastructure sites.

The Ground-Based Optical Target Tracking, or GOTT, an autonomous image processing tracking system, tracks a full-size vehicle moving approximately 28 kilometers per hour from 50 to 300 meters away. A camera mounted on a motion control tripod closes the loop around the camera image/target tracking algorithms. A pan-tilt motion control assembly, made of 6061 aluminum, is mounted directly to the tripod for image stabilization and target designation. After the image processing algorithms designate a target, a low-power green laser is used to designate the target for the system operator.

The object detection algorithm uses a neural network to locate a user-selected vehicle within the field of view. The target detection algorithm communicates with an optimized target tracking algorithm and sends commands to the pan/tilt assembly to keep the moving target in view. The camera is boresight-aligned and mounted directly under the laser designator. The pan-tilt assembly consists of a pulley and gear system that allows for more precise movements from the stepper motor.

Project Goal: Create a functioning lab mockup of the cryocooler and mounting system currently installed on the spectrograph LUCI instruments of the University of Arizona Large Binocular Telescope Observatory.

The Large Binocular Telescope Observatory, or LBTO, is affected by vibrations from the cryocoolers on the spectrograph LBT Utility Camera in Infrared instruments, or LUCI. A test bed consisting of a working analogue of the cryocooler and the surrounding spring system would help reveal possible improvements that can be made to reduce the vibrations.

The Vibration Mitigation System has several subsystems that imitate the conditions of the actual LUCI design by supporting a cryocooler with a spring holding system and mounting it to an optical breadboard that is connected to an artificial loading system. The current LBTO structure was slightly modified to fit the test device and to compensate for the lack of force caused from the vacuum of the LUCI instruments. The vibration spectrum of the mockup was measured and modified until it was as close to the spectrum of the cryocoolers in the LBTO as possible.

Experiments with this lab mockup can test improvements to the springs and cryocooler to reduce transmitted vibrations to the telescope.

Project Goal: Design gloves that measure and display the amount of mass a user is holding and provide time-under-tension calculations during exercise activities.

The Mass Gauntlet gloves allow users to assess their exercises when the force exerted may not be known, such as in assisted pull ups.

They display the real-time force a user is exerting in metric or English units. The gloves can also calculate and display the time-under-tension for each workout set. Embedded pressure sensors and wireless capabilities integrated into the gloves measure the total force exerted on them. Rechargeable batteries allow the gloves to be repeatedly reused.

Added calibration functions allow for improved accuracy and repeatability. The device has several preprogrammed capabilities that users select as desired.