Students Design and Build Drone for ASME Competition* Camilla Tabasso and teammates Liyan Liu, Ben Ong, and Marissa Van Elsen are working with Professor Phil Deierling to compete in the Innovative Additive Manufacturing 3D (IAM3D) Challenge in East Lansing, MI in April. This is a competition put on by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) global E-Fests. It is designed to give students around the world the opportunity to showcase their creativity and knowledge by re-engineering existing products or creating new designs utilizing additive manufacturing technologies. During the Fall 2019 semester, the VIPT (Virtual International Project Team) group constructed a racing cargo drone that is capable of picking up and dropping a payload, as well as navigating an obstacle course. They began with several design iterations, and once the final design model was completed, 3D printed all components, and assembled their drone. Now the group is in their testing stage. For safety reasons, the drone will be controlled remotely using first person visuals.
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“The coursework I did in past years really helped me and my team into navigating the different stages of a design process. In fact, design of the drone involved CAD design as well as consideration on weight, flexibility, resistance, stress concentrations and many other factors. I think this project allowed me to gain a deeper understanding of all the steps necessary to fully develop a prototype,” Camilla reflected. She strongly recommended future students participate in similar competitions to utilize their classroom knowledge in real-life applications. Students in the UI ASME chapter, a mechanical engineering student organization, are doing just that. They will also be participating in the IAM3D competition this spring, and have been collaborating with Camilla’s VIPT team, and will start testing and practice flying their drone together. Camilla was recently showcased in the University of Iowa’s Dare to Discover campaign for her research regarding autonomous systems. She focuses on “the development, implementation, and testing of control strategies to enable safe operations during autonomous scenarios.” She says her research impacted her so much so that she will be continuing her education at the University of Iowa, pursuing a PhD degree in Mechanical Engineering after her graduation in May.