EWU engineering and design hosts project demo

Anyone who walked past Eastern Washington University's Computer and Engineering Science Building on June 1 may have seen a rocket in its launch tower or an electric motorcycle parked next to the door.

They may have also heard the screeching and saw the smoke coming from a rocket motor demonstration on the front lawn.

The university' engineering and design department hosted its second annual student project demonstration and open house where graduating seniors displayed a variety of engineering and robotics projects that used state-of-the-art design and development.

Esteban Rodriguez-Marek, engineering department chair, noted that this year's open house featured 120 students with 25 projects on display.

"All of the projects had to have some level of complexity to them but they were mostly developed based on the interests of the students," Rodriguez-Marek said.

Rodriguez-Marek said some projects were sponsored by companies such as Avista Utilities, Garmin and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"We'll sometimes have sponsors come out to see the students for these events," Rodriguez-Marek said. "Sometimes they'll look at a project and say 'I want to hire these students.' That's what I really like to see."

One of the robotics projects was a self-flying quadcopter. According to Suzanne Riesenberg, who helped design the vehicle, the group programmed the it to fly on its own and search for a charging station through GPS when its battery is low.

Another robotics project was a vehicle controlled by hand gestures. Tongxin Liu, one of the project's designers, said his group would guide a radio-controlled car using hand movements in front of a Kinect-PC camera. A Bluetooth would pick up signals from the camera and send them to the vehicles' servo/motor drive board.

"You move the car forward by moving your right hand, and move your left hand to make it move backwards," Liu said.

Some projects focused on energy efficiency, including an electric motorcycle and car, and a "smart sprinkler," a system programmed by a smartphone that would water a garden in any shape.

Some of the projects were actually pieces to a larger project, such as the rocket that Eastern's rocketry team is preparing for the upcoming Intercollegiate Rocket Engineering Competition in Salt Lake City, June 15-18.

In last year's competition, the team finished third out of 37 schools in the Basic Division, behind MIT and Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica from Brazil.

One of the team's groups constructed a rocket that would go up to 20,000 feet. Chad Billmyre, one of the rocket's designers, said the airframe is comprised of 100 percent carbon fiber. Another group designed the rocket's aluminum tower to have enough support that would allow the rocket to rotate during takeoff without buckling the tower.

A third group created the propellant for two rocket motors. Wayne Johnson, one of the students who designed the motor and propellant, said the team used ammonium perchlorate to make the propellant in an effort "to bring down the burn rate, so it burns a little longer."

"This year we're going with a propellant that will have a slower, more steady, smoother burn," Johnson said.

Al Stover can be reached at al@cheneyfreepress.com.