Project goal: To design a resupply system that autonomously identifies, lifts and stores a 300-pound cylindrical tube aboard a ship following underway replenishment.The U.S. Navy’s ability to remain at sea relies on underway replenishment, a method of transferring cargo and supplies from ship (or aircraft) to ship. These supplies are then moved to their storage location. The process is risky and jeopardizes personnel, especially in extreme weather conditions.The designed system replaces human labor and includes an easy-to-use electronic interface. A key component of the design is the end effector, a software-controlled mechanical design that integrates with a robotic arm to locate and move objects to a specified storage area.The end effector has been tested to withstand harsh marine environmental conditions,such as salt-water exposure, extreme temperatures, humidity, rainfall and ice accumulation. Analysis was conducted to ensure the equipment’s reliability and safety.

Project goal: To design and build a testing apparatus that provides a safe environment in which to bring piezoaccelerometers up to 260-600 degrees Celsius while vibrating 100 Hz at ±1.0 g of acceleration. Caterpillar’s quality control procedures include vibration testing on its equipment using piezoaccelerometers, which export test data to a data acquisition system for subsequent analysis by Caterpillar engineers. Piezoaccelerometer manufacturers, however,do not provide testing or calibration data for some of the temperatures at which Caterpillar operates its equipment, which means that the exported test data might be unreliable. The apparatus designed contains the heat around the accelerometer while keeping delicate electronics from overheating. Combined heat transfer and vibrational analyses provided the correct conditions for the inside of the testing apparatus, and heat transfer calculations determined the amount of insulation required to make the outside surface safe to work with.

Project goal: To design improvements to the SunDanzer BFRV15 battery-free vaccine refrigerator that reduce production costs and address environmental concerns.Analysis included researching alternatives to the current phase change material, testing the input voltage, evaluating autonomy time and temperatures, analyzing heat transfer data, and performing analyses to understand the required battery size for the system to function properly with the longest lifetime. World Health Organization standards require the internal chamber temperature to remain between 0 and 8 degrees Celsius. No suitable phase change material that froze in the desired range was found. Water was chosen as the phase change material, but a way was needed to keep the chamber from dropping below 0 degrees Celsius. Insulation to form a physical barrier between ice and the vaccine chamber was incorporated, as was a battery-powered heater to heat the ice when the chamber reaches a specified minimum temperature. Testing and analysis proved the viability and cost effectiveness of the modified system.

Project goal: To provide a machine concept capable of replacing the electric rope shovel as the primary method for surface mining excavation. The primary requirements were to achieve a material-loading rate of 200 tons per minute, machine geometry providing a 70-foot horizontal and 30-foot vertical digging reach, and material selectivity greater than that provided by the electric rope shovel.Extensive research, trade study analysis, and CAD modeling narrowed the concept ideas to a final design designated the “bucket-scraper.” The design maximizes the amount of time the machine spends extracting material by removing the swing cycle that plagues existing power shovels,and by implementing continuous mining methods. The system architecture of this new machine was broken down to the component level,where functional requirements were specified and confirmed through analysis. CAD modeling of structural components with 3-D printed models was used to verify machine geometry requirements. Calculations and theoretical analyses were performed to confirm the excavator’s loading rate. Less detailed analysis and design was performed on the machine’s hydraulic system, power system, control system, propulsion system, conveyors, and structural components.

Project goal: To provide a machine concept capable of replacing the electric rope shovel as the primary method for surface mining excavation. The primary requirements were to achieve a material-loading rate of 200 tons per minute, machine geometry providing a 70-foot horizontal and 30-foot vertical digging reach, and material selectivity greater than that provided by the electric rope shovel.Extensive research, trade study analysis, and CAD modeling narrowed the concept ideas to a final design designated the “bucket-scraper.” The design maximizes the amount of time the machine spends extracting material by removing the swing cycle that plagues existing power shovels,and by implementing continuous mining methods. The system architecture of this new machine was broken down to the component level,where functional requirements were specified and confirmed through analysis. CAD modeling of structural components with 3-D printed models was used to verify machine geometry requirements. Calculations and theoretical analyses were performed to confirm the excavator’s loading rate. Less detailed analysis and design was performed on the machine’s hydraulic system, power system, control system, propulsion system, conveyors, and structural components.

Project goal: To design and test a smartphone application to make balance exercises easily accessible, to help improve balance in adults 60 or older by providing evidence-based motor-cognitive dual-task exercises.Age-related poor balance results from diminished neuromuscular feedback, and often leads to an increased risk of falling. Studies show that motor-cognitivedual-task performance exercises can enhance proprioception and neuromuscular control, which improve balance and gait speed and reduce the risk of falling in older adults.A simple and age-appropriate smartphone application was developed in accordance with the requirements of Android and iOS mobile operating systems. The design includes a goal-configurable instructional audio feature that guides users through their exercises, and a system of motivational notifications, goals and progress tracking to keep users engaged at a level of practice with which they are comfortable.

Project goal: To design a device that records data from transportation events that could affect flightworthiness of sensitive parts.The sponsor needs a device to determine whether the parts it ships have been subjected to transportation events that exceed design or demonstrated limits, which could render them unflightworthy. The device needs to record and present evidence of any shipping events that exceedt he specified control limits set before shipping. The flexible event data recorder houses three internal sensors to monitor six degrees of freedom motion, triaxial acceleration, temperature and humidity. The flexibility of the device allows the user to record data from numerous sources, including external ports designed for three variable capacitance accelerometers, six strain gauges, and two type-T thermocouples. The data recorder continuously monitors all sensor channels for trigger conditions, which are set before shipment via a built-in USB interface with a custom Windows application. When a trigger event is detected, the recorder saves pre-trigger and post-trigger sensor data to separate files, which can be extracted after shipment through the same Windows application.

Project goal: To design test procedures to investigate the relationship between the power captured by Regenesis and the Regenesis system’s effect on an HVAC unit. Regenesis is the concept of generating electrical power from the discharged airflow of a heating, ventilation and air-conditioning, or HVAC, system. The first procedure determines the baseline efficiency of an HVAC with and without the sponsor-provided high-efficiency fan and Regenesis fan blade. The second test restricts different amounts of airflow to find similarities in this simulation and how Regenesis restricts the airflow and affects HVAC pressure. Finally, a test is run to determine the relationship between the placement of the system above the HVAC and the power captured by Regenesis. The tests determine the placement of Regenesis where power is optimized, and if the HVAC is running to factory specifications.

Project goal: To design a low-cost drone attachment capable of using lidar to create a sub-five centimeter resolution model of a selected area. This system easily mounts to an unmanned aircraft and,by programming a simple flight path, is capable of flying over a designated area to create a high-resolution 3-D model of the scanned area. The system uses three low-cost lidars scanning simultaneously while the unmanned aircraft is on autopilot slowly flying across a field. A custom-designed interface board allows microcontrollers to log the data from each lidar. An ultra-high-resolution GPS using real-time kinematics was selected to get a global positioning accuracy of less than one centimeter. Custom software running on a supercomputer was used to process the millions of data points collected and return a 3-D model of the scanned object with a final resolution accuracy of five centimeters or less.

Project goal: To apply compressive sensing theory to the field of optics to create a nominal four times improvement in X and Y image resolution from the detector. High-resolution images are highly sought after in many commercial and military optical systems because they can store large amounts of information, but detector costs increase significantly with pixel count.The Super Resolution Imager SRIdesign incorporates a coded mask, which complicates the point spread function of the optical system. The mask pattern can then be exploited to acquire improved image resolution. To meet the Shannon-Nyquist sampling criterion, the design incorporates a piezoelectric translation stage on the mask to allow multiple image samples to be captured with different mask positions. Representing the samples as a Toeplitz matrix presents them as an undetermined linear system, allowing them to be solved by computer compressive sensing algorithms such as the two-step iterative shrinkage/thresholding, or TwIST, algorithm.