Team Status 2013

US Army PEO STRI High School Engineering Internship

• Preparing for the Internship:

  We are starting the coordination for the 2013 Summer Internship (June - Aug). We will have 6 planned engineering sessions. The focus is on STEM Competency. UCF-IST will be facilitating the lab space for our internship.
• We will be meeting at Partnership III building in room 233.
• The schedule of the engineering sessions:
• Mondays 8:00 AM to 12:00 Noon

  June 17
  June 24
  July 8
  July 15
  July 22
  July 29 (make-up session)
  Aug 5 (final testing)

  We will have both new incoming students and some returning students this summer. Our ultimate goal with the students is to develop an underwater robot that is cost efficient.
  
  "Super SeaPerch"

• We have a lot of lessons learned from last year, that we will develop upon. This summer we plan on expanding our internship curriculum to add further detail work in microcontrollers.
• During the year we have been working on the concept robot arm to be attached to the "Super SeaPerch". The YouTube video below shows our feasibility test work with the robot arm. We used the parallax Basic Stamp board for the feasibility test. This summer we plan on implementing the arms using Arduino microcontroller. Plans for this summer also include initial Video camera integration and sensor display using the Raspberry Pi single-board computer.

   

• Mon June 17 2013 : Internship orientation

  The engineering student all did an awesome job!
  The student teams are all on schedule regarding the building of their Sea Perch.

  This summer we have 26 students that signed up for our internship.
  We had 18 students attend the first engineering session at the UCF-IST facility on June 17.
  Four of the summer interns from Edge Water high school will participate primarily at the EarthRise facility with their mentors.  Four other students were not in attendance but will participate starting the next engineering session.
  The students in attendance were divided into 4 teams. 

• Mentoring Presentation 1a

• Mentoring Presentation 1b

• Following introductions, we conducted our orientation.  The students were provided an overview of the internship and the expectations.  A Safety Brief was presented and the students were given their SeaPerch kits.

  Home Work:
  The students will start planning for the robot arm design.
  Develop the CAD model in any application they are comfortable using.
  Bring or e-mail the model in STL file format.
  Students are also tasked to get familiar with the Arduino IDE.
  The teams will be getting their Arduino cards during the next engineering session.
  The teams will also complete the building of their SeaPerch during the next session.
  

   

• Mon June 24 2013 : SeaPerch Design

• The engineering student all did an awesome job! The student teams are all on schedule regarding the building of their Sea Perch. We had 18 students attend the engineering session. Two students had excused leave. Two student who missed our first engineering session joined us and quickly kept up with the rest of their teams. For the students who have missed both our engineering sessions so far, please contact me at the earliest. You will be automatically dropped from our internship if you miss more than two engineering sessions.
• The teams received their Arduino microcontroller cards during the engineering session. Only one team successfully completed building their SeaPerch. The rest of the teams "almost" completed the building of their SeaPerch during the session.

Mentoring Presentation 2

• Reminder:
• Please get safety glasses for yourself.
• We will be on July 4th vacation and will not be meeting next week. Our next engineering session is on July 8th.
• Home Work:
• The students will start planning for the robot arm design. Develop the CAD model in any application they are comfortable using. Bring or e-mail the model in STL file format.
• Students are also tasked to get familiar with the Arduino IDE.
• Find and bring an empty Altoids candy container. They candy containers make excellent project boxes or controller boxes for your projects.

• Mon July 8 2013 : Rocketry and Aviation engineering

• We had our awesome Rocketry and Aviation engineering session this July 8th. After making the gliders and rockets, we went to Blanchard Park to launch them around noon. During the engineering session the students also completed simulation on the Rocketry applet:

  You can download the .zip file from

  http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/rocket/rktsim.html

  Click on the yellow "DOWNLOAD APPLET" button.
  

• Guest Mentors for this session:

• Mr Walter Legan, P.E. (Retired), Flying Stars Model Aviation:
• Mr Legan will provide the students an overview and introduction into Model Aviation. Model Aviation has always been a very appropriate vehicle for STEM Education, for decades serving as the prime pathway to many fruitful careers in Engineering and Aviation. In the past few years Model Aviation has become even more accessible with the advent of light, quiet, small, lower-cost model aircraft and radio control flight simulators.

• Dr. Randal Allen
• Dr Allen will provide the students overview and introduction into Rocketry. Dr Allen has over 20 years of industry experience and is currently an aerospace and defense consultant working under contract to provide 6DOF aerodynamic simulation, modeling, analysis, design, integration, and test of navigation, guidance, and control systems. His previous experience includes launch systems integration and flight operations for Titan-IV missions, propulsion modeling for the Iridium satellite constellation, and field application engineering for MATRIXx. Dr. Allen's academic background includes a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Central Florida, an Engineer's Degree in Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering from Stanford University, an M.S. in Applied Mathematics and a B.S. in Engineering Physics, both from the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign). He also serves as an Adjunct Professor in the Mechanical, Materials, and Aerospace Engineering (MMAE) department at the University of Central Florida (UCF) in Orlando, Florida.

Rocketry Presentation

• Home Work:
• In preparation for our next week task with the Arduino microcontroller, please go through the following tutorials.
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCxzA9_kg6s
• Please watch tutorials 1-5 on the series for Arduino by Jeremy Blum.
• The students will also be working on the robot arm design. Develop the CAD model in any application they are comfortable using. Bring or e-mail the model in STL file format. Please work on your team robot arm design.
• I want you all to focus on the claw part first. My preference would be a claw design that does not require the use of nuts and screws. Below are some samples you can use as reference or bases for enhancement or modification.
• Robotic arm
• http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2433
• Claws
• http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:66818 http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:104377 http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:18339
• http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:67929
• http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:71797
• You all can use any CAD application you are comfortable with as long as you can produce a STL file of your design. We use Blender and have used AutoCAD Student edition.
• http://www.blender.org/
• http://students.autodesk.com/

• Mon July 15 2013 : Arduino microcontroller

• The engineering student all did an awesome job setting up their ArduinoMicrocontrollers! The students learned the fundamentals of implementing the Arduino for project development. Programming for the Arduino was implemented for :
• Autonomous
• Serial input
• Button input

• During the engineering session we went over the content presented as part of YouTube tutorial series for Arduino by Jeremy Blum. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCxzA9_kg6s

• Mentoring Presentation 3

• Arduino code and the Terminal software zip file

• The student teams are all completed regarding the building of their Sea Perch.   Next week the students will be manufacturing the claw designs they have developed.

• All the student teams are doing great!
• We reviewed the Arduino programming codes and hardware schematics during the engineering session. We also reviewed the mechanics of the robot arm implementation.

• Arduino Code for Claw and Arm with Hardware Schematics zip file

• The 4 student teams will now be merged into 2 main teams. This was done due to our limited resources with the hardware needed to make the waterproof robot arms. The students had the opportunity to visit EarthRise Inc to see the MakerBot fabricate components of the robot arm.

• Both the teams sent in their robot claw designs and they will be fabricated in time for our 29 July engineering session.

• For our 29 July engineering session:
• As we agreed, since many of the students missed a engineering session during our internship, I highly recommend you all attend this make-up session. This will also be our first chance to conduct initial verification of the robot arm in the swimming pool.
• We will meet in the conference room at Partnership III room 233 at 8:00 AM. Then around 8:40 start our caravan towards the YMCA at Blanchard Park. Please bring your swimming clothing if you plan on getting into the pool while testing your SeaPerch.

• We reviewed the Arduino programming codes and reviewed the mechanics of the robot arm implementation.
• The teams implemented their robot arm and conducted initial verification of communication between the Arduino and the robot arm servos. 

• The wiring was waterproofed using electrical tape and the servos were coated with Vaseline to provide a waterproof barrier to connection at the servo horn.
  We then caravanned over to the YMCA at Blanchard Park to conduct initial verification of the SeaPerch and the Robot arms. 

• We also tested the waterproof camera that we attached to a SeaPerch.  The camera is an aftermarket Car reverse cam ($17) which we wanted to test. 
• Both the team robot arms performed well.  The camera we used for our test provided a clear image as it was used with the SeaPerch.

• Both teams will have to practice the control of the SeaPerch and Robot arm to be able to retrieve item from the bottom of the swimming pool for their final exam.

Summer 2012 Events