A MechSE researcher shared her group’s expertise and opportunities with local middle school students in a unique drone project that was demonstrated earlier this week.
In a long-term project that began last year, W. Grafton and Lillian B. Wilkins Professor Naira Hovakimyan and her graduate researchers, along with MechSE Education Outreach Coordinator Joe Muskin, has been teaching teams of students at the Campus Middle School for Girls how to design and build their own drones.
Hovakimyan, Muskin and mechanical engineering graduate students led the middle schoolers in designing their drone frame using CAD software, 3D printing in MechSE’s Jackson Innovation Studio, then building their design idea, adding motors and controllers. Monday’s event at the school in Urbana was the first time the student teams tested their creations.
Tami Adams, Executive Director of Campus Middle School for Girls, said the project has enabled her students to see how important coding, computer science and mechanical design are when thinking about engineering.
“Our students went from zero experience to designing a platform for a drone in Tinkercad to now actually flying it. It’s been really wonderful to watch their transformation – which is one reason I welcomed this collaboration with the MechSE team. Our school is committed to making sure girls have experiences in STEM that show them all the ways they can be part of engineering,” Adams said.
This collaborative project has been supported by the NASA University Leadership Initiative (ULI)-funded AVIATE Center, for which Hovakimyan serves as Director. Established in 2022, the Center for Autonomous Vehicles in Air Transportation Engineering (AVIATE) is a multi-disciplinary consortium of researchers and engineers from university and industry, with a vision of furthering the technology for rapidly emerging urban air vehicles (UAVs) and safe autonomous flight.
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