Quadcopter Course Curriculum Design
Base frame without electronic actuators
The
PROBLEM |
As one of the largest and most well known STEM schools in the country, Georgia Tech (Tech) has a reputation for producing engineers that are both talented and well rounded. Because of this it came as a surprise to me that several of my classmates at Tech progressed through the curriculum while gaining very little experience with traditional shop tools or newer additive technologies...despite being in the same Mechanical engineering program as me. I began to further investigate this phenomenon alongside Dr. Amit Jariwala and his Vertically Integrated Projects (VIP) team in order to understand if this was indeed a broader issue.
We discovered that this lack of experience was a widespread issue that had been perpetuated by the lack of required hands on project based work during early stages of the mechanical engineering program. After some discussion with school administration and other like-minded student organizations, our team helped to establish the 5-week 'Mini-Mester' program that would allow us to teach a multi-disciplinary cohort of students about:
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Additive and subtractive technologies​
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Iterative concept development
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Design thinking
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Low-Medium fidelity prototyping
We partnered with the Invention Studio to offer this course in an immersive makerspace format
Our objective was to create an immersive lab based course for ANY student interested in hands-on making​
We called it:
Rapid Prototyping for Product Design
Our
PROCESS |
01
Learn Prototyping & Design Theory
Lectures & Quizes
During this part of the course, our goal was to expose students to the design thinking and prototyping process as quickly as possible. We invited guest speakers like Scott Miller (ex Lead Design Engineer at iRobot pictured at left) to give our students a flavor for the kinds of ideation and technical skills that are applicable to industry oriented careers.
02
Gain Fabrication Skills
Lectures & Quizes
We made sure to incorporate a lab component that would allow students to apply the skills they had learned from our lectures in a fun hands-on environment. Each lab focused on a new tool group (3D Printing / Metal & Wood working / Laser Cutting & Engraving / Mechanical & Electrical Integration) and included a deliverable meant to be completed individually by each student.
03
Apply Skills To Open Ended Design Problems
Lectures & Quizes
After our students had learned how to use each tool group, they could then work on creating a multi-material display box! This box had elements from each tool group and allowed the students to delegate tasks amongst team members.
04
Analyze & Evaluate Peers' Design Work
We included weekly 'design reviews' for our students so that they could get advice and guidance on their smaller team based projects. These design reviews consisted of students being split into 'designer' and 'user' teams that would defend / critique each others work based on the desirability and feasibility of their designs.
05
Reflect On Learning and Experience
On the left is a photo of our students after the final design presentation proudly presenting their multi-material display boxes! They also presented a medium fidelity prototype of their small team projects to their peers.
The course needed an updated collaborative team project that would CAPTIVATE our students while also teaching the necessary prototyping & ideating skills
So...I proposed a Multi-Material Quadcopter
Student testimonials from COHORT #1 |
There's no need for every prototype to be a working model, or even a complete model. There are many strategies to break things down
I found the workshops very helpful and the collaborative project because it forced us to use so much different equipment
Name, Title
The display box team project should be practical and interesting in itself, not just a learning tool
PROPOSAL
DESIGN
ASSEMBLY
Updated project
CREATION |
I proposed this design project to my research team for 3 reasons:
1. Material & design choices would directly impact structural and/or mechanical function.
2. Students would be able to utilize a wider variety of lab tools.
3. Having a functional project that they can fly would improve student participation.
I wanted to design this project in a way that would challenge students while staying true to the simplistic and sleek x-frame quadcopter design I had researched. The rendering shown above is from the final model I generated in SolidWorks 2019. The 3 main components are: X-frame, electronics bay, and landing gear.
After 3D printing, water jetting, laser cutting, and soldering all of the components I had designed, I was able begin assembling the system. I made sure to carefully document the mistakes I made along the way so that improvements could be made to ease student design in future iterations.