HANDS-ON LEARNING What began as an aircraft design class at OSU 20 years ago has grown into a multidisciplinary program focusing on building, testing and researching technologically advanced UAVs for a variety of uses including emergency preparedness, weather research, environmental monitoring, precision agriculture, border security and military operations. Jacob’s class is an example of the hands-on training that makes OSU’s aerospace program so strong and unique. For decades, long before there was a focus on unmanned aerial systems, OSU MAE students designed projects on paper. Andy Arena, considered by many as the founder of OSU’s unmanned aircraft program, joined the MAE faculty in 1993 to teach the capstone aircraft design class for seniors. Arena knew traditional design
was important, but he wanted this class to have a different experience. “If a student is going to appreciate design, they really have to build something,” Arena says. “You don’t see problems on paper because everything works on paper. They need to understand the consequences of their decisions and crash things.” In 1995, Arena introduced building and flying small remote-controlled airplanes to test student design concepts. continues PHOTOS / PHIL SHOCKLEY
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rofessor Jamey Jacob walks into his classroom and begins talking to the room of Oklahoma State University mechanical and aerospace engineering students. Jacob, a member of the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering faculty in the College of Engineering, Architecture and Technology, checks on the students’ progress with a project. Student teams are testing unmanned aerial vehicles to “deliver” a small package, or payload in industry jargon, and drop it on a target in a flight test. “We haven’t specified what kind of delivery,” Jacob says. “It could be medical supplies or emergency equipment or tacos.” Though they’re not delivering tacos yet, UAVs have become almost common. Relatively affordable radio-controlled aircraft are used to shoot spectacular videos of everything from migrating whales to natural disasters to extreme athletes risking all for YouTube. Yet the real UAV revolution underway is not on YouTube but in research labs and classrooms like those at OSU.
OSU’s unmanned aircraft systems facilities include a dedicated flight test facility with two runways, a control room and a hangar where more than 200 custom unmanned aircraft have been tested.
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