Project Goal: Develop a cost effective, rugged and simplified antenna mounting design that allows for unhindered driver visibility and uninterrupted GPS signal acquisition and data transfer.

Caterpillar sought to modify the current GPS antenna mounting system on its autonomous trucks and move it from the chassis to the dump body. This would maximize satellites’ visibility, minimize positional error, maintain optimal signal quality, protect electronics, and ease servicing.

This design provides a new auto leveling system that ensures the GPS antennas stay parallel to the horizon when the dump body is in motion. It also improves driver visibility by eliminating obstructions and provides easy access to facilitate maintenance.

The design eliminates the currently inconvenient mounting location while allowing for increased productivity and safety during mining operations.

Project Goal: Design a way to move, dispense and reel in conveyor belt material used to protect concrete pads around the Caterpillar facility.

There are many concrete surfaces at the Caterpillar Tucson Proving Ground that crack easily when heavy machinery moves on them, leading to expensive maintenance costs. Currently, Caterpillar mechanics use a forklift to lay thick and heavy mining conveyor belts on top of the concrete surfaces to protect them. It is a time-consuming process that puts mechanics at risk of injuries.

The team’s spooler design provides a safer and more efficient method to lay down and move conveyor belts around the facility, while also improving belt storage.

The design uses a spool that can be connected and disconnected from the spooler and the conveyor belt. The spool is connected to two wheels that rotate when a forklift pushes the spooler forward. As the wheels rotate, the conveyor belt is rolled up on the spool. Since the conveyor belt remains on the spool, it can be moved around safely and easily.

Project Goal: Design a program that estimates a hose sag depending on the hose characteristics, and create a test center to prove the program’s accuracy.

Caterpillar wanted a program to estimate the sagging that a hydraulic hose produces when under certain environments. This can help the company better plan construction of its machine designs. The test center will provide data from the program and be available for further experiments.

The team designed a digital program that mathematically predicts sag by using a modified catenary equation to analyze hose characteristics such as identification type, diameter and span length.

In the testing center, six hoses of three different hose types and varying diameters are suspended across two points of a galvanized steel structure, and hydraulic fluid is pumped through them to simulate their environment. Optical sensors and Arduino computing determine the sag. The test structure can be extended and shortened to accommodate hoses of differing lengths. The structure can be broken down so that an average person could carry it, and its steel construction combats long-term effects like rust.

Project Goal: Precisely measure the depth of the water at a given point in an evaporation pond and transfer the data approximately three miles to a facility to be stored and tracked over time.

Current methods use manual measurement to gauge the depth of wastewater in an evaporation pond at a natural gas powerplant. The Depth Measuring System, or DMS, is a low-cost, low-maintenance, self-powered, easily accessible alternative that is accurate within 1.0 foot. Depth data can be wirelessly transmitted to a remote server for retrieval or read by an operator from an analog system.

Trigonometric analysis found the angle of water depth related to the orientation of the DMS. The team enabled wireless data transmission by integrating the system with existing infrastructure, using a combined microcontroller/GSM transmitter. Power analysis ensured that the system could operate using solely a solar panel.

Testing proved the system could measure the depth of water in an evaporation pond with a high degree of accuracy, transmit the information for later use, function under its own power and operate easily.

Project Goal: Design an off-axis radio telescope, controlled with a graphical user interface, that allows operators to pinpoint large objects in the solar system.

The Steward Observatory sought a radio telescope that can be operated by students, faculty and the general public.

The team designed a 2.4 meter off-axis dish with a graphical user interface to control and operate the dish in a user-friendly manner. The telescope uses serial communication to activate the servo motors, which control the rotation of the dish antenna. A Python-configured GUI allows the user to simply input altitudinal and azimuthal coordinates to move the radio telescope. The dish panels were designed with Zemax to limit diffraction at the observation wavelength of 21 centimeters. The observatory’s new metal panel forming technology was used to meet curvature specifications across the aperture. A spider-arm truss structure holds the dish panels.

Numerous analyses on the dish and truss structure confirmed the radio telescope will not deform or collapse due to wind or gravity when located on the roof of the observatory.

Project Goal: Redesign an existing laboratory-based vertical flow immunoassay platform capable of providing real-time disease diagnoses in a variety of low resource settings.

The Center for Applied Nanobioscience and Medicine developed a novel, paper-based vertical flow immunoassay, or VFI, capable of detecting targeted disease biomarkers. The developed system only functioned in a laboratory setting. Replacing the electronic syringe pump for sample testing and a desktop scanner for diagnostic imaging would allow the VFI to be used in real world situations.

The team redesigned components of the vertical flow immunoassay platform, or VFP, to be powerless, portable and ergonomic. The user activates a mechanical device to depress a syringe, allowing sample liquid to flow through the augmented paper membrane of the VFI at a desired, constant rate. The VFI, updated with a more ergonomic housing for easy handling by users with personal protective gear, is then removed from the actuator and placed on a cell phone adaptable lens. Finally, the use of colorimetric signal detection of biomarkers on a paper membrane provides a diagnosis.

The redesigned VFP efficiently and effectively identifies disease biomarkers on site in low resource settings.

Project Goal: Design a user-friendly, time-efficient platform that uses a culture of up to six individual three-dimensional cellular structures for drug screening, personalized medicine or disease modeling.

Accurate 3D cell culturing for drug screening, personalized medicine or disease modeling can be tedious and biologically complex.

The Apparatus to Simulate Tumor Environment and Reproduce Organs Using an Interactive and Dynamic System, or ASTEROIDS, platform aims to simplify this process using two perfused chambers separated by two membranes on which cells can be seeded and mimic vascular and connective compartments.

While the currently used ASTEROIDS platform is effective for singular experimental trials, it must fit within an incubator with several pumps and tubing/connectors attached to other laboratory equipment. This new design accommodates up to six ASTEROIDS chips in a single experiment. This platform uses a custom chip holder, growth media heater and heating element to ensure the optimum thermodynamic environment of 37 ± 0.5 degrees Celsius.

Project Goal: Conduct video surveillance of an area of interest from two miles away by using a relay to remotely control a drone.

Police departments have a critical need to safely conduct remote aerial drone reconnaissance of an area of interest.

The team formed a communication chain from the user to the drone by integrating various commercial products. A Raspberry Pi 4 was mounted to a DJI drone using a 3D-printed adapter plate. A remote computer accesses the Raspberry Pi 4, which is connected to the internet by a commercial 4G module. The user taps into the DJI GO 4 Wi-Fi program to control the drone.

Two sets of data are captured and recorded in the event of a drone failure. A high-resolution data set is recorded on the drone's SD card, while a lower resolution version is recorded on the host computer.

Project Goal: Conduct a trade study on commercially available software defined radio, or SDR, circuit card assemblies to replace a system that is approaching obsolescence, and to develop a prototype of the selected SDR.

The team performed a comprehensive trade study on commercially available software defined radio, or SDR, circuit card assemblies to replace an outdated system. The sponsor company provided more than 30 very stringent performance and form-factor requirements. After canvassing the market of SDR circuit card assemblies, or CCAs, the team identified four options as contenders for the trade study. They ultimately selected Rincon's Raptor SDR and mezzanine board after completing a detailed trade analysis of four variants.

After the trade study was completed, the team procured and performed a comprehensive verification and validation, or V&V, test of the selected SDR. To appropriately verify that the specifications were met and evaluate the capabilities of the board, the team researched and developed more than 25 SDR CCA 25 tests. After the V&V testing confirmed that the assembly met requirements, the team developed a prototype to demonstrate the SDR's functional capability. The prototype takes FM frequency inputs and transmits the audio to a family radio service system. The prototype simultaneously received and transmitted two signals demodulated into the correct frequency with the Raptor SDR assembly.

Project Goal: Develop a system for zoos that uses an animal’s motion within a habitat to trigger various animal enrichment activities, with the goal of simplifying animal care and improving animal well-being and visitor experience.

To provide improved care for animals, many zoos have environmental enrichment programs, in which staff members activate various activities or objects to stimulate the animal. The team was tasked with improving this concept by automating the enrichment system for Reid Park Zoo’s jaguar habitat.

The system is composed of four identical units, each containing electronic components within a weatherproof case with a mounting bracket. The units use interchangeable passive infrared sensors that detect changes of infrared light within their field of view and use a radio frequency mesh network to determine if another unit is active. If no other units are active, then the unit that detected motion will switch a relay, enabling power to an enrichment device. The enrichment device remains powered for a set time that the user can adjust.

This system gives the animal freedom to choose which enrichment activity is activated by its motion. This could potentially be integrated into other animal enclosures and at other zoos.