Class helps smooth the bumps in students’ and Mississippi’s roads By Susan Lassetter
Life in Mississippi comes with certain undeniable truths—summers will be hot, sweet tea will be plentiful and the roads always will be bumpy.
tough project, but at the same time, it was doable.”
Transportation officials make a valiant effort, but in a state where surface elevations change with the seasons, the never-ending battle to maintain accurate land surveys—not to mention make repairs—strains budget and personnel resources. To expedite this process while saving time and money, the Mississippi Department of Transportation (MDOT) provided $25,000 in funding to a Bagley College of Engineering senior design team to enlist its help in creating a robotic surveyor.
Burnes, along with fellow electrical engineering majors Amanda Burns and Kris Williams and computer engineering majors Matthew Crymble and Tyler Smith, began their project by evaluating an abandoned, unsuccessful surveyor model. They determined its weaknesses to begin building their own, all-new systems. The team eliminated the use of liquid components, which had caused the previous model to be affected by vibrations and acceleration. They also employed distance sensors, instead of a tracking wheel, to allow the device to respond more quickly to angle changes.
“Basically, MDOT wanted to find a way to complete more surveying, faster and with fewer people,” explained team leader Eric Burnes. “At first, we looked at the project and wondered what we had gotten ourselves into. It looked like a
“The previous model’s actuator could only move about three inches per second, making it difficult to adjust to changing situations, but with our design, we were able to increase its speed to approximately 40 inches per second,” Burnes said.
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Momentum Spring 2010
Encased in a handmade fiberglass form, the final design can be mounted to a rack on a truck and uses controls, cameras and GPS which can be monitored by employees in the cab. Although it took more time and consideration, the team utilized many of these user-friendly tools with real-world functionality in mind. “We could have made it easier on ourselves by not including some things, but we knew in the end we wanted to create the best product possible,” Crymble said. “This was the first time any of us had worked with expectations from an outside organization. The responsibility was daunting at first, but it was rewarding.” Team members began their capstone class knowing that it would test their accumulated engineering knowledge, but they quickly learned that their project wasn’t just about helping to create smooth driving surfaces--it was also going to help smooth their transition into professional
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