Monitoring ocean health is an essential part of understanding how climate change affects the oceans. To address this critical need, the team developed the AQUABOT Fluence system. This aquatic robot provides a safe and cost-effective way for organizations to effectively study ongoing issues. The team integrated several features into the AQUABOT that make it ideal for operating in a harsh ocean environment. These include a self-righting hull design to ensure stability in turbulent oceans, a
propulsion system for mobility, and sensors to collect and transmit ocean health parameters in real time. Operators can remotely control the system using autonomous waypoint navigation.

The team’s engineering efforts focused on minimizing drag through hydrodynamic optimization and incorporating robust materials so AQUABOT can withstand marine conditions. This ensures energy efficiency for extended battery life and durability for a longer product lifetime. The team also developed a temperature data collection and transmission system using Starlink satellite internet service and implemented a user-friendly interface for remote operation.

Constructing a habitable lunar base is a significant step in the advancement of space exploration. In situ resource utilization is one of the best options for obtaining water safely and economically. LARP is a multi-year project that presents a solution for water acquisition in a lunar base by using the ice present on the lunar surface.

The system is composed of two separate units: a mobile excavation unit (MEU) and a stationary extraction unit (SEU). The MEU uses a bucket elevator to excavate and collect regolith and store it in a load bed. It utilizes an Arduino-based microcontroller with an on-board Wi-Fi chip to allow for user control on a phone app graphical user interface. The user can control the height of the bucket elevator and load bed via linear actuators and the speed of the wheels and elevator using DC motors.

The MEU deposits regolith into the SEU’s heating chamber through a funnel and motorized ball valve. Here, pipe heating tape heats the regolith until the water inside evaporates into the condensation subsystem. The steam passes through a heat exchanger, condenses back into water, and drips into a storage container that can be removed for water collection and later use. The team’s proof-of-concept system can produce 0.5 L of water per day and can be scaled up to provide more as needed.

UAM is an emerging market that includes electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft, which prioritize compact, space-efficient, integrated systems. However, the small volume and close proximity of heat-generating components result in high thermal concentrations. This degrades avionics performance and longevity. Passive thermal management strategies are key to enhancing system reliability and avoiding the design complexities, energy usage and maintenance requirements that come
with active cooling solutions.

The team created a passive thermal management system that integrates copper heat pipes, an aluminum heat sink and thermal interface materials to efficiently dissipate heat. The team designed, assembled and tested a compact hardware enclosure featuring this thermal management system and used polyimide heaters to simulate internal heat loads based on expected operating conditions. Computational fluid dynamics and thermal analyses were performed using SOLIDWORKS Flow
Simulation followed by experimental testing in a thermal chamber to validate the design’s performance across an ambient air temperature range of -32°C to 70°C. The final design offers a compact, lightweight thermal management solution with no moving parts. This ensures reliable avionics performance in weight- and size-constrained environments like eVTOL aircraft.

The team focused on replacing obsolete components and enhancing existing design elements for the Syncardia hospital cart. Phase I involved modifying the current hospital cart to accommodate a new C2 Driver connector and touchscreen. This included integrating a projected capacitive touchscreen optimized for use with gloves and resistant to fluid interference. The team updated the cart design to accommodate these components by modifying the sections of the frame that house them. These new components passed all verification testing and successfully addressed the pressing obsolescence issue.

Phase 2 of this project was to redesign the hospital cart itself. This redesign further enhanced the cart’s performance by improving hospital elevator accessibility. The team accomplished this by adding larger wheels, increasing the touch screen’s mobility with modified mounting, and reducing the overall form factor. Additionally, the team redesigned the frame to meet new human factors requirements. This addressed issues associated with inserting the C2 driver, which required lifting the 602lb. cart over 2 ft. The new design configuration reduced this height to only 2.5 inches.

The team also added new features including storage hooks for managing power and air hoses and a modified drawer to house spare batteries. These improvements provide greater efficiency and functionality for hospital use.

Ambaflex spiral conveyers are designed to work with specific types of containers referred to as totes. The presence of non-totes causes severe jams and expensive repairs. These incidents lead to immense cost impacts including direct repair costs, lost production hours that affect multiple downstream processes, and labor costs. This project prevents non-totes from advancing further through the Ambaflex conveyors at an Amazon facility. This saves Amazon operational expenses and improves cycle times and customer satisfaction.

This design relies on two key components to distinguish between totes and non-totes: a Cognex IS2000M camera and an Orange Pi 5. Using color and dimension detection, these two components and their associated software work together to identify objects on the conveyor belt and stop it when necessary. Totes are bright yellow with specific dimensions; anything else on the conveyor line is classified as non-tote. The device is bolted to the floor via a sturdy rectangular metal frame that
encloses the conveyor belt. An interface screen on the frame’s side allows Amazon associates to monitor the system’s status, understand stoppages and restart operations as needed. The PIT system integrates with Amazon’s existing setup to illuminate an Andon stick when a non-tote is detected and alert associates to remove it from the conveyor belt line.

Histology labs remain one of the least automated environments in health care. Due to a shrinking pool of professionals, highly trained pathologists and histotechnicians are often required to perform these tedious and repetitive tasks, reducing their ability to focus on complex diagnostics. Additionally, tissue staining can leave residue on slides that can interfere with microscope analysis and digital scanning.

The team developed the Automated Slide Transfer System (ASTS) that combines the precision of a 3D printer with the functionality of a forklift to streamline laboratory workflow. ASTS accepts an input tray of up to 20 slides, individually removes and inspects each slide, detects excess reagent dots, reads barcode identifiers, and places slides into an output rack. It then generates a comma-separated values file containing barcode data and general slide quality information.

A Raspberry Pi 5 controls ASTS’s high-precision gantry system equipped with a custom-designed gripper for slide manipulation, offering 0.05 mm accuracy. A Blue Series M12 lens and a Raspberry Pi HQ camera analyze slides during transfer. This enables rapid barcode scanning and reagent detection. With adjustable gantry speeds of up to 1 ft per second, the system can process 20 slides in under 400 seconds.

By automating tedious histology tasks, the ASTS reduces workload, improves efficiency and enhances slide quality. This supports Roche’s mission of “doing now what patients need next.”

Power distribution and control are essential for efficient operation in various applications, including power delivery, equipment testing and product launching. The ability to selectively switch power on and off for multiple channels improves flexibility, safety and efficiency. The largest bottleneck with these systems is procurement and component manufacturing. As demand increases, manufacturers are seeking new designs that emphasize modularity, component and wiring consolidation onto
PCBs, part interchangeability, sustainability, and reduced lead and build times.

This project achieves these goals by enhancing an existing power switching design. It adds features to the schematic, refines the PCB layout and adds advanced communication capabilities. The complete design is also much easier to assemble and rework. The team’s updated system consists of three identical 16-channel power switching assemblies housed within a standard rackmount enclosure. All components used in the assembly will be available for the foreseeable future and adhere to Automotive Electronics Council standards. Each assembly is controlled by an easily removable microcontroller on a daughterboard that communicates with an external GUI. This allows users to toggle individual channels remotely via ethernet for secure communication.

Roche Tissue Diagnostics is developing the Histobot system for safe, efficient and automated transfer of tissue sample histology slides. These histology slides are currently prepared by technicians who add coverslips to the slides or equipment that automatically places coverslips. Both of these methods can cause inconsistencies in coverslip alignment. A misaligned coverslip can cause damage to both the slide and the human tissue being processed. This increases the time for patient diagnosis. Roche needs a precise, modular and safe system to ensure that histology slides always have aligned coverslips.

To meet these goals, the team developed the Slide Labeling for Integrity and Defect Evaluation System (SLIDES). It is an entirely automated system that can detect misaligned slides. The main design is a turntable with a rotating disk supported by an outer frame and placed above a plate. A stepper motor spins the disk around to different positions via a pulley system. It can house up to four slides simultaneously, and Roche’s Histobot system can load and unload these slides from SLIDES as it moves around. The frame design includes a camera and lighting system positioned above the slides for viewing and analysis.

A fast and accurate diagnosis is essential for providing therapeutic results to cancer patients. A key part of this process is creating stained microscope slides. Roche (Ventana Medical Systems) has provided over 10,000 BenchMark ULTRA and ULTRA PLUS instruments to health providers. These devices use specific immunochemistry reagents for fast and automated staining of microscope slides. This project creates a system that can repeatedly and precisely characterize and optimize the reagent rinse and drain cycles of the Fenyx pump used in these devices. It integrates the microfluidic pump with stepper motors, a weight scale and an optical sensor using custom Python code.

The team built the BencH20 prototype to improve upon reagent cycles in the standard benchtop Fenyx pump. BencH2O includes a mechanical frame that supports pump tubing, a pressurized chamber, a weight scale, a slide bed and multiple stepper motors that allow the team to finely adjust the nozzle position relative to the slide. A Raspberry Pi 4 and Triple-Axis Trinamic controller will complete system commands by working mutually to communicate software code and firmware.

The Raspberry Pi stores weight data for further flow rate analysis. The team can run multiple tests in sequence to simplify the microfluidic delivery. This makes it ideal for diagnostic workflows.

Slope leaching is a common and effective method for extracting copper and other ores at mines. However, the current method for preparing and deploying the necessary dripline harnesses is labor-intensive, and the helicopters used for deployment have limited capacity. This leads to inefficiencies and space constraints. The team developed a dripline harness and spool system to address these challenges. This system reduces the on-site footprint and enhances dripline deployment efficiency. It also enables scalability in slope leaching operations.

The team developed an improved drip line harness by incorporating flexible construction fencing into the design to maintain spacing within the system. The associated spool design consists of two triangular stands as supports and a cylindrical spool design that can accommodate the 24,000-square-foot harness that will be furled on this design.

The team performed finite element analysis, Instron testing and mathematical analysis to confirm that the design would perform well in its intended environment. By implementing this harness and spool design, mine operators can enhance copper production efficiency and maintain a sustainable, scalable process for future operations. Thanks to these improvements, this system will likely increase annual profits for the mining operation.