MAE

Diversifying technology is an imperative mission that requires careful consideration of all consumers involved, no matter how small the demographic, as to ensure equity, inclusion, and representation for marginalized groups. DiversiTeam’s goal is to provide an equitable design solution to a product that failed to consider diversity in its initial implementation. In our redesign, we aim to account for accessibility issues and/or other needs that underrepresented groups may have for consideration within our future product. For Winter 2021, our team has decided to redesign contemporary safety glasses. Conventional safety glasses are uncomfortable, ill-fitting (i.e.,one-size fits all approach), and provide poor clarity for users (e.g.,fog up), which causes many practical issues for users; especially those who suffer from anotia/microtia, eyeglass wearers, or those who generally have difficulties wearing standard glasses’ temples without discomfort. DiversiTeam's design will provide versatility to a product that will not only widen accessibility for users, but enhance convenience for all safety glass wearers. To remedy these concerns, DiversiTeam is designing innovative modular safety glasses with the following features: modular lens attachment capabilities that can accommodate the user’s size/fit preference, antifog coating to avoid poor clarity, and various adjustable strap/arm wearing styles to best suit the user’s comfort level, and the ability to integrate stackable modifications (e.g., face shield, top strap, light bar, etc.) to the frames through attachable/clip on methods will be implemented as a unique feature of this product. DiversiTeam's design will provide versatility to a product that will not only widen accessibility for users, but enhance convenience for all safety glass wearers.

Most of the energy leaves our bodies in the form of heat simply due to existing temperature gradients in the environment. An average human body at rest emits about 350,000 J of energy per hour, which is roughly equivalent to the energy given off by a 100-Watts incandescent light bulb. As a matter of fact, the conversion of human-body-heat into electrical energy using a solid-state thermoelectric generator (TEG) sparks interest in creating wearable self-powered mobile electronics and sensors. We, the UCI W.A.T.C.H team, which stands for "Wear A Thermoelectric Calorie Harvester," are dedicated to designing wearable thermoelectric devices powered by human body heat!

Background:

Hydrogen fuel cells are a form of renewable energy that is easily accessible since hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, and do not cause pollution or danger to our environment as they do not release greenhouse gases as opposed to burning fossil fuels.The long range drone project uses a fuel cell battery as a source of power for a flying robot that can be remotely controlled or fly autonomously through software-controlled flight. For this particular project, we will be researching the fuel cell efficiency in a drone that we will design and build ourselves. Groups will be building a structure for the drone and assembling electronic parts for use throughout the experiment, while keeping the fuel cell as the focal point of this project. 

Goals and Objectives:

This year (2020-2021), the team will design and crate a fuel cell battery powered drone that flies and add the application of carrying...

Our goal is to design a cost-effective robotics kit that provides various design options for historically, underrepresented students in STEM.
We will provide tutorials, a syllabus, and customizations of the kit based on the resources available to students.We aim for outreach programs to implement our kit with ease and shine a light to the many applications of robotics in STEM to the next generation.

Summary: Design a cost-effective, robotics instruction kit for middle school students. 

Spring 2021 Deliverables:

• ​Claw assembled/calibrated

• Global code w/ interface

• Cost reductions via bulk purchasing

Whoopy Wipes is a project aimed to create a device that delivers warm and santized towelettes to the user. This devices utilizes a tray to dispense wipes, and an internal heating and pumping system to heat a cleaning solution of your choice to 165 degrees Farenheit. The solution is then sent to an ejection try to wet the wipes for the user.

Goal and Objectives:

This is fifth phase for this project. Over all the phases the design, functionality and all components have gone through multiple iterations and finally his quarter we were able to create a prilimainary working prototype. The next step will be to create the final version. 

Team Contact

Team Lead: Katlyn Chiu (Katlync1@uci.edu)

Company Sponsors

Company Name: High Tower

Company Contacts: Jon Stevenson, Steve Wiled and Melanie McCarthy

Faculty Advisors

Farzad Ahmadkhanlou (farzad.a@uci.edu)

Vince McDonell (mcdonell@apep.uci.edu)

Background/Summary:

UAV Forge is a multidisciplinary engineering design project with a focus on designing, building, and programming unmanned aerial vehicles in order to complete the flight missions specified by the AUVSI SUAS 2021 Competition. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, AUVSI canceled the 2020-2021 UAV competition; however, UAV Forge decided to continue development using the same time constraints and mission needs. Since the construction of our UAV was already underway, we continued building and improving our design to produce a drone that meets competition requirements. Although we will not see it compete this year, we will have learned important lessons for the future and solved the intricate technical challenge. 

The project had historically been a research project at UCI and has grown more popular over the years. Only recently has the project grown to encompass the competition aspect and grown our team to 60 members. With such growth came a remodel...

Background:
We quickly adapted our habits when the COVID-19 pandemic started, such as working from home, attending virtual classes, and especially changing sanitation practices. Over the course of the pandemic, we have become more aware of how much bacteria and germs reside in our phones, keys, wallets, and other items. Post COVID-19, people will look for ways to sanitize their items to improve their health. Our team wanted to create a portable solution to reduce cross-contamination in people's daily lives as they study, work, and travel post-pandemic.

Goals: 

• Create a sanitization system for bags
• Use UV-C light to eliminate 99.99% of germs, bacterias, and other viruses.
• Prevent UV-C light from harming the user
• Implement smart features
• Allow users to interact with features using their phone
• Target the uses of young professionals (25 to 35 years old)

Team Contact:
Team Lead: Wei-En Chen (weienc1@uci.edu)

Company Sponsors:

Sharper Image ®

Adam Gromfin &...

CanSat is an annual, international design-build-fly competition where student teams of maximum 10 students build a probe (the CanSat) to complete a specified mission.

The overall purpose of this project is to create the correct conditions in which helium will be in a solid state. This will be done by pressurizing an already existing pressure vessel with a view port, to 30 atm and then cooling said pressure vessel to 1 kelvin using a cryostat. However because the cell has never been used in these conditions it is necessary to calculate; the stress on the view port;  stress on a pressure cell body; and the elongation of the bolts holding the view port closed. If the cell can withstand the pressure and temperature, then it will be used to create solid helium. The other purpose of this project is to design from the ground up, a new pressure vessel capable of withstanding being pressurized to 50 atm, that will be used in further experimentation in the creation of solid helium.

This design project aims to explore the different methods currently available for harnessing the energy beneath our feet, to compare and contrast these methods, and to modify, improve and/or design a new method to effectively harness geothermal energy. Current Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) are capable of operating at temperatures as low as 100℃ which brings almost all of the U.S. landmass into the realm of energy extraction.

The Hot Air Balloon project is a part of the Advanced Combustion group that consists of MAE students designing a method to test the emissions and efficiency of a hot air balloon burner. We are focusing on obtaining data from hot air balloon burners both out on the field as well as at the UCI campus test facility. The current team will be continuing the work that students from previous years have started to complete the project goals. Currently, the team of 2020-2021 is devising a way to mount the probe to take readings from the burner as well as designing the ducting for the testing rig.

Background

Cargo Plane is a senior design project competing in the International SAE Aero Design competition. Per parameters provided by SAE, we will be designing and building an electric RC cargo airplane that will be carrying a payload of soccer balls and metal plates. Our focus is to generate high lift at low velocities and create a high payload to plane structure ratio optimizing for a greater flight score in competition. 

The plane contains a single propeller propulsion system and is mainly composed of a variety of woods and metals. Our team works together in three structural subsystems of Wings, Fuselage, and Tails while few members branch off into specialties of Aerodynamics, Propulsion, Avionics, and CAD. This project provides students with the opportunity to experience the engineering process in practice.

HyperXite’s goal is to research, design, build and validate a scalable self-propelled pod to demonstrate the feasibility of Hyperloop design concepts at a high pace of innovation. This year, HyperXite will be attending the European Hypeloop Week and will build a small-scale pod to be tested on the team's own test track. 

UCI Modular and Mobile Rocket Rack is dedicated to designing and manufacturing an optimal rocket rack that will allow the UCI Rocket Team to transport their 25 ft by 12.83 inch diameter rocket from UCI to the desert for live testing. Our objective is building a reliable, modular, affordable, rocket rack for the UCI Rocket Project. Keeping cost at a minimum while providing a high strength rocket rack will be one of our hardships. Solidworks will be used to make a 3D model of the rocket rack that will later be analyzed using Ansys for component failure.

Student engineers working on this project are tasked with producing a preliminary design of the next generation liquid-fueled rocket engine for the UCI Rocket Project. The injector, combustion chamber, and nozzle are designed to achieve a given thrust and specific impulse while also being relatively simple to manufacture. Since these components are experiencing exceedingly high temperatures and heat fluxes, a suitable cooling system must be designed to maintain safe operating temperatures of the combustion chamber walls and nozzle. 

In this project, we are utilizing a reciprocating compact microfluidics disk to separate plasma from whole blood. Doing so will allow for the plasma to then be tested for antibodies using an adaption of immunoassay technology. An important application of this technology is that it is able to help test blood samples for COVID-19 samples quickly and accurately.

Design Build Fly is an annual competition hosted by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). Each year, AIAA publishes a new set of rules for the DBF competition. For the upcoming 2021 DBF competition, candidates will be required to design, build, and test an aircraft with a towed sensor.

Background

                The UC Irvine Rocket Project aims to push the boundaries of collegiate rocketry and the development of liquid propellant rockets. Our project strives to prepare students for successful careers in the aerospace and defense industry. In 2017, Base 11 became a partner of the UCI Rocket Project. Their gracious donation enabled the construction of our rocket lab. During the Fall quarter of 2019, the team has scheduled and completed a successful static test fire to experimentally verify our first engine design. An experimental combustion test is a critical first step in designing a full rocket system as well more efficient, higher performance engines.

Goal and Objectives

            The Rocket Project is currently working towards launching our Preliminary Test Rocket (PTR) in the FAR Dollar per Foot Challenge (DPF) Challenge. In order to reach this goal we have three projects currently in development.

• Preliminary Test Engine (PTE): PTE
...

Background 

UAV Forge will be competing in the AUVSI-SUAS 2021 competition. This competition is to simulate how package delivery services are looking to deliver packages without the use of operators. The Unmanned Aerial System (UAS )must be able to avoid other UAS’ in flight, map the operating area to identify any hazards, avoid static objects, identify drop locations, drop off the package in a safe location, and move the package to the customer through the use of an Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV).

Goal and Objectives

The optical image stabilization capstone project focuses on redesigning and improving the original UAV Forge 2019-2020 static camera mount. The purpose is to increase the Mapping and Object Detection Classification and Localization (ODCL) capabilities through mechanical methods. Two needs that could be satisfied are vibration isolation and field of view expansion.

Link to your documentation

Link to External Team Website

Team Contacts 

M.I.S Capstone: Matthew...

UAV Forge is a multidisciplinary senior design project that focuses on using engineering fundamentals to design, build and program an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to complete aviation missions outlined by the AUVSI SUAS 2021. This year the team is focusing on making a hexacopter for the competition. Our main focus for the hexacopter is the landing system. Currently, we have a static landing system that consists of tubing. However, the static landing system affects the UAV’s landing and imaging capabilities. The current static landing system obstructs the vision of our LiDAR and imaging systems, reducing our performance in the ODCL, Mapping, and Moving Obstacle Avoidance tasks. Therefore, our team is focused on designing an adaptive landing gear to improve upon last year’s design. An adaptive landing gear will allow the UAV to adapt to any type of terrain and provide a sufficient amount of tilt resistance. 

Background:

CPUs and TPUs generate a lot of heat 

Traditional temperature sensors can not easily acquire temperature data at any given point of the cooling system. They can either:

•  measure temperature at a single point or
•  for the overall system 

Goals and Objectives:

• Develop a model for a TPU chip cooling system that takes advantage of AI vision by measuring various properties of bubbles in the flow of a water cooling system
• Train an AI model to recognize and interpret bubble/droplet dynamics
• Gain a better understanding of how AI works
• Learn how to use AI in real world applications

Sponsor

•  Yoonjin Won (won@uci.edu)

The UCI RP Fins Design and Integration works to design and create a plan of manufacturing of fins for the UCI Rocket Project’s Preliminary Test Rocket. For the past several years, the team has had a multitude of successful launches, all with the incorporation of a fin design.  The Fins teams will be continuing the tradition of launching a rocket with fins by designing the fins geometry, selecting the material and components to manufacture, and developing a mounting method to attach the fins onto the fuselage of the rocket. 

Integrating the words tension and integrity, tensegrity utilizes adjustable tension among one-dimensional interacting members in order to create different three dimensional structures. This project aims to create the first morphing wing at UCI using a tensegrity mechanism. The wing will be able to change airfoil shape on demand, in order to produce more efficient aerodynamic properties based on flight sections (takeoff, cruise, and landing). Split into two sub-teams, simulations and structural, the team will work toward creating and building a functional prototype of the tensegrity wing, and test the prototype in UCI's wind tunnels to verify results of more efficient lift, drag, and pressure distributions than conventional wings. 

The UC Irvine Intelligent Ground Vehicle is a project in order to implement skills learned in university courses by designing and testing a self-automated ground vehicle that can navigate an obstacle course autonomously. The purpose of the project is to be able to develop a vehicle that utilizes multiple sensors to self navigate while carrying a payload. 

UAV Forge is an interdisciplinary team that competes in the Student Unmanned Aerial Systems Competition (SUAS) hosted by the AUVSI. This competition involves teams programming and designing both an unmanned ground and aerial vehicle to undergo missions laid out by the rules. The Guidance Navigation and Control subteam researches alternative methods to land the ground vehicle as well as program it to navigate to given waypoints. 

Thermal Vacuum and Control of Spacecraft Variable Emissivity Devices (VED’s) is an engineering design team focused on designing a vacuum chamber with capabilities such as, thermal conduction and thermal radiation generation, detection, and testing within a moderate to high-vacuum regime. In addition, the team will also design, integrate, and test a control system capable of thermal flux detection and data extraction under both standard atmosphere and moderate to high-vacuum conditions. Successful integration and operation of the designs will enable a cost-effective means of conducting ground-based space validation testing for small-scale spacecraft subsystems. Specifically, testing will be conducted on contending alternative variable emissivity devices, such as an electrochromic cell, Smart Window technology, and an electrophoretic display (EPD). Each of the three components are currently being researched by the teams affiliated research project, Spacecraft Thermal Management Systems.  

The wearable sensing team is creating smartwatch and smartphone applications that interact sensors within a smartwatch to analyze stroke patient rehabilitation. The aim is to provide patient high levels of motivation and understanding of their exercises during the rehabilitation process, all while giving physcial assistants, trainers, and doctors useful data that they can use to monitor their patient at any time. Patients deserve a feeling of independence and easily interpreted data visualizers that encourage continuation of rehabilitation. In time, the project is wanting to expand to more patient populations and release a product available to consumers accross the globe.

Background:

UAV Forge is a senior design project hosted by UCI that aims to build an Automated Flying Vehicle, and compete in the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International Student Unmanned Aerial Systems Competition (AUVSI SUAS). The goal of the competition is to have your vehicle follow a route while avoiding obstacles, arriving at waypoints, and delivering an unmanned ground vehicle to a designated point.

This specific subteam, Structures Mark II, was a Capstone project team gathered for the purpose of creating an optimized airframe. It is tasked with closely researching structural allowables, requirements, constraints, material and design choices for a new and better frame. The team will then model an airframe for the rest of UAV Forge to possibly build in the upcoming year. For now, the overall design will be a prototype and can be adjusted to fit any new needs or new design choices when the time comes. ...

The project aims to use a team of mobile robots equipped with a passive RFID system to devise an all-weather, wide-area asset detection and localization system for stationary RFID tagged ground targets that may be behind obstacles or obstructions. The applications include locating and recovery of incapacitated firefighters and other first responders in challenging environments such as wildfires, inventory management, and equipment tracking.

Background:

Our design basis is to make modifications in the previous’ teams design in an effort to make the automated assay more reliable and user-friendly. The general concept of the automated assay is to create a device which autonomously or semi-autonomously administers a malaria test using reagents to a similar extent to a high-priced biometric assay. The assay has to give appropriate responses to an assortment of reagent based test. While also reporting the test results to its test users through a convenient smartphone application. 

Global landscape:

Although the previous teams’ intentions are unknown, from the very beginning our team had one idea in mind. Malaria is a disease rampant in third world countries — similar to a host of many. If doctors are able to test their patients sooner and faster, their treatment would be significantly more effective. For that reason, we use cheap and easily assessable parts which...