2022 Annual Report 2022 | Page 35

racked up a series of significant wins . Their work has introduced major cost savings for industry , catapulted new possibilities for work in space , supercharged engines , and enriched quality of life .
WINNING INTERNATIONAL DESIGN COMPETITIONS
One group of undergraduates , mentored by Williams and postdoctoral researcher Joseph Kubalak , caught the eye of NASA .
The nine-member senior design team , working directly out of the DREAMS Lab , picked up $ 75,000 in funding as part of NASA ’ s University Student Research Challenge grant competition to create a robotic work cell for the autonomous production of a 3D-printed drone . This would require not only producing individual parts but assembling them and creating a working final product .
The funding allowed the team to formalize their research idea into a challenge : to bring together computer-aided design , mechatronics and robotics , programming , and structural analysis to fabricate the drone chassis , embed the electronics , and scrape the completed drone off the plate . If all went well , the finished drone would be able to fly away from the plate and shoot a video of the next drone being created .
A drone flies away from the printer .
The robotic work cell builds a drone .
The yearlong process of senior design yielded just that . The team started as the fall semester opened , taking four months to create conceptual designs and prototype solutions . After the holiday break , they used the next five months to deploy the machinery that would print and assemble the final product .
The first drone flew away from the printer in April .
Completing a project this complex within such a short amount of time would have been monumental for an army of experienced engineers , but it is especially remarkable for a group of students working on their first degree .
“ This is not your ordinary 3D printer ,” said Williams . “ This is an industrial robot that is programmed to both 3D print and assemble electronics to enable autonomous fabrication of complete mechatronic systems . That is a pretty big deal .”
Along the way , the team of undergraduates also took home the top prize at the Student Manufacturing Design Competition , held annually at
ANNUAL REPORT 2022
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