The team designed a patient isolation and transportation system that transports people infected with highly contagious diseases from the field to strategic biocontainment facilities distributed around the world.

While offering the necessary medical procedures and equipment, the transportation system keeps the patient in a sealed, isolated environment to prevent spread of the infectious disease, such as those caused by Flavivirus, Ebola and Lassa viruses.

The system can be transported by ground and air to reach, secure, isolate and transport patients. It also complies with military and federal standards for withstanding various field uses and transport conditions, such as humidity, temperature, drop, shock and vibration.

The team designed pilot and copilot simulator platforms upon which the project sponsor can mount its aircraft simulators during integration and test. The platforms are designed for fixed wing and rotary wing aircraft simulators, and can support up to 450 pounds.

Platform heights are adjustable between 32 and 48 inches from the ground, and can tilt in three directions at a maximum angle of 22 degrees. Lifting and tilting mechanisms are controlled remotely.

The platforms will be used in the sponsor’s manufacturing facility, and at trade show to demonstrate aircraft simulation controls.

A head-up display greatly improves situational awareness and increases safety by allowing the pilot to see outside while providing all the information necessary to maneuver the aircraft. A head-up display enhances safety by providing the pilot with conformal attitude and flight guidance information overlaid on the actual out-the-window view for precision flying and landing.

The objective of this project is to investigate the feasibility of designing a holographic head-up display that can use the windshield as an optical waveguide. The primary focus of the project is to investigate the effect of windshield curvature on the final image displayed to the pilot.

The system design was demonstrated by using a projector system that traps light into the windshield waveguide through an injection hologram. The light must internally reflect totally until it reaches the proper height. The light is then directed into the pilot’s eyes through an extraction hologram.

The sponsor uses high-density polyethylene milk crates an average of 10 times before they are stolen or damaged. The team was charged with designing a cost-efficient milk case that would be acceptable to the sponsor’s customers.

The team’s design solution is an open frame crate that meets all the requirements for safe handling, proper loading of six one-gallon milk containers, support of the required weight, and for common shipping standards.

The new crate is lighter, backward compatible, less likely to be stolen, more cost-effective to produce, and should become as accepted as the current crate by retailers and consumers.

The goal of this project is to design and implement a real-time lidar-based collision-avoidance system. The system has been tested using a remotely operated car. If the operator attempts to crash the car, the system detects an oncoming collision and forces the car to brake to avoid the collision.

The design consists of optical components for the lidar system, a Texas Instruments Hercules microcontroller, time-to-digital converter to record laser time of flight, and a Hall effect sensor to measure wheel speed.

The system determines the velocity of the car and the distance to the oncoming object and calculates the braking required. A tablet-based application shows system status in real time via head-up display; the system is scalable for real-world application.

The team’s objective is to develop and build a closed-loop alignment terminal to align a small glass tube with a brass ferrule. The team designed a robotic alignment terminal that only requires an operator to load the ferrule and cartridge holding the glass tube into mounts.

The mounts hold the cartridge and ferrule in the correct position ready for bonding. The terminal is capable of sensing and adjusting for concentricity to within 0.005 millimeters, axial alignment to within 0.05 millimeters, and parallelism alignment between the cartridge and ferrule.

The robotic terminal uses active image processing and micropositioners to align the cartridge and ferrule to the specified requirements. Once the operator loads the cartridge and ferrule, the process is completely automated and requires no further operator input.

The goal of this project is to develop a system that accurately simulates sand ingestion by auxiliary power turbine engines used in commercial aircraft.

The system designed tests cooling passages that keep the turbine from overheating. The small size and complex geometry of the cooling passages allow them to become clogged with sand, causing engine failure.

The team replicated the operating conditions of the engine during sand ingestion and then ran a series of tests under various flow configurations. The sponsor will use the team’s data as a starting point for a more extensive study of sand ingestion.

Secondary collisions are a life-threatening hazard for emergency response personnel and civilians at accident scenes. This project models a crowd-sourced emergency response system that engages local certified civilian contractors, allowing them to respond quickly to emergencies while reducing communication workload and mitigating risk of further property damage or loss of life.

The team designed and built a web-based emergency response system that illustrates the registration, verification, movement, allocation and confirmation of emergency resources via certified civilians. This software model is intended for government use.

System features include real-time traffic and meteorological data monitoring, cloud-based storage of incident records for later analysis, an automatically generated payment algorithm, and a location-based dispatching algorithm. The system is accessible on a responsive mobile platform.

Strut failure on the CAT 770 mining truck means costly downtime for the sponsor’s customers. The objective of this project is to design and implement a monitoring system for the truck’s hydraulic struts.

The system needs to monitor strut performance continuously during truck operation and alert the driver to strut behavior that indicates it is damaged.

Data gathered by the system from pressure, temperature and displacement sensors on the hydraulic struts is processed through developed algorithms to determine if the strut’s behavior matches the ideal within a set tolerance. The driver is prompted with the error and a mitigation strategy, such as recharging the strut with nitrogen or replacing it before it fails.

Sorbent systems are used in a wide range of applications, from chemical factories to aircraft cabins. Small-scale testing saves materials and time; this project’s goal is to design a small-scale system to test the efficiency and capacity of industrial-grade sorbents.

The team compared the adsorption and desorption capabilities of two sorbents: APG-III and AZ-300. Sorbents were tested for their ability to adsorb and desorb volatile organic compounds introduced into an air stream at low concentration, on a scale of parts per billion.

A ppbRAE 3000 wireless handheld volatile organic compound monitor, which is capable of ambient temperature adsorption and temperature-swing desorption, was used to acquire concentration data.