MAE Projects

Background 

"Robot for Executing Physics-Inspired Path Planner" is a capstone design project. The project team will design and build a self-contained and self-sufficient robot capable of tracking a preplanned collision-free path in a 2D environment containing circular obstacles with a maximum error of 10% at any point.

Unique Background of Project Team Members

Background

Due to COVID-19, the medical industry has received an increase in demand for rapid covid tests, as well a need for contactless interactions between humans. The increase in traffic for hospital visits has strained the current logistics network and increased delivery times. CONCEPT VTOL plans to mitigate the risk for contamination and decrease delivery times by designing a novel VTOL drone that will deliver prescriptions and rapid covid tests from the UCI Student Health Center to UCI students within a 5-mile radius. 

The objective of the FUSION Engineering Project is to design and create a functional autonomous vacuum cleaner. Each team must adhere to certain design specifications set by the Project Directors and will compete with each other at FUSIONCon in May 2023. Each team’s goal is to create a cost-effective robot while maintaining functionality.

FUSION's Engineering Project provide students with the opportunity to design and manufacture a robot from scratch and learn the basics of automated controls, motions/distance sensors, and programming. 

The goal is to design and manufacture an autonomous robot capable of picking up small amounts of dirt and debris from the ground simultaneously avoiding any obstacles in the way.

Competition: 

Each team will begin with their robot in a square 5 by 5 feet field with small pieces of dirt and obstacles randomly scattered around. The objective for the robot is to pick up the pieces of dirt while simultaneously avoiding the obstacles present in the way. Each team will be scored based on their performance during the 2 minute period. Each piece of ‘dirt’ picked up by the robot is +1 point and each time the robot hits an obstacle is -1 point. The final score in the end will represent the team’s score and will be used to determine the winner.

Background
     This student-led project is a partnership with the LN4 Hand Project. The LN4 is a non-profit organization that aims to provide free prosthetic hands to anyone in need- anywhere in the world. They have already delivered over 5000 of their prosthetic devices to below-the-elbow amputees, mainly in India and Cambodia. There remains an estimated 145,000 eligible patients globally, waiting to receive a helping hand.

The Horizontal Stepping Robot is a rehabilitation tool that will allow researchers to study epidural electrical stimulation (EES), with the aim of allowing patients with spinal cord injury to regain the ability to walk. The robot will be rolled up to the patient's bed, allowing for training while the patient is still hospitalized, and support the weight of their legs to allow an “air stepping” motion. It will record the patient leg motion and allow for tracking of the patient's progress through rehabilitation. The current approach is to use pulleys, springs, and cables to design a passive system that hangs patients' legs and assists leg motion while using the microprocessor, Arduino, to collect data and attract the motion of patients' legs.

Our name comes from the e-Human Powered Vehicle Competition (HPVC), hosted by the national organization American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) which we are participating in. We want to establish this new UCI senior design project as a recurring project that anyone can join. In addition, we are partnered with ASME at UCI to help get lower-classmen involved in the process so they can gain some hands-on experience necessary for succeeding in their engineering careers.

ASME hosts an endurance race that runs for 2.5 hours with many obstacles such as tight turns, uneven terrain, and inclines. HPVC at UCI will design and manufacture a recumbent, tadpole bike with a sufficient rollover protection system to keep the driver safe in case of an accident during the endurance race. The bike consists of 5 major systems: braking system, drive system, steering system, rollover protection system, and electrical system. The team has been split into three subteams: statics which consists of the bike frame, rollover protection system and seat; dynamics which consists of steering, braking, and driving; electrical which consists of the battery, electrical box and electric motor. Overall, the team aims to produce a bike that is ergonomic, safe, and easy to handle.

Our project is centered around an electro-permanent magnet(EPM), that ultimately can be implemented into two main iterations. The function of an EPM is to have a switchable magnet, within a nonswitchable magnet, that can have the direction of its magnetic field be switched by the input of a set current. In a larger scale application, this EPM can be incorporated with a bellow and thus when the magnetic field is switched a resulting pull force or push force of a spring would insinuate. The goal is to have the on setting of the switchable magnet induce an outward push force from a spring, and thus create force/motion just by supplying current. With the bellow, this EPM could be incorporated with artificial movement. 

Description:

A fixture will be designed to withstand the ammonia atmosphere of a nitriding process in an oven of 1000℉ and must be able to support the weight of four shafts. The fixture must hold three splined shafts and one quill shaft in the oven such that minimal stress occurs in the shaft during the thermal cycle to 1000℉ that can result in permanent deflection. This will require modeling of stresses in the fixture at temperature with the strength reduction associated with >1000℉ appropriate margin.  

Technical Details:

Our team will design, build, and test a robot arm.

A key function of our Robot Arm design is the implementation of a proxy arm to control and program the arms motion. The goal is to create an intuitive user interface that can quickly repurpose the arm for the task at hand.

Our inspiration for this proxy arm is from a youtube video demonstrating the control and programming of a robot arm. In this video a button is pressed to begin recording the proxy arms motion. It can be controlled in real time or the motion recorded for playback. Unfortunately the video has since been made private.

  According to many route planning methods in the available literature, the Robot that we are going to create will follow the path precisely  while avoiding probable obstacles. We must discover strategies for finite-dimensional optimizations, in which the ideal path is formed by discrete optimal points. Using the calculus of variations, the Path Follower we will create directly builds the perfect path with the fewest steps. Additionally, it will be able to implement the essential control inputs that the pathfinder scheme specifies. As a proof of concept, an obstacle-oriented map of the environment is first constructed in this offline phase. Control inputs are then transmitted to the robot so that the Path Follower can carry out the command precisely.

Our Small Scale Wind Turbine project aims to provide a sustainable and cost-effective solution for individuals, organizations, and communities looking to generate their own electricity. In this project, we focus on designing and building a compact, lightweight, and durable small-scale wind turbine that can generate a minimum of 10 watts of electricity in low wind speed conditions,  while being able to withstand wind speeds up to 18 m/s. The wind turbine must fit into a 50cm x 50cm x 50cm box without its mounting assembly and have a total cost of less than $300. The goal is to create a wind turbine that is both efficient and accessible, providing a reliable source of energy for those in need. Through careful design and rigorous testing, our Small Scale Wind Turbine program aims to create a high-quality and cost-effective solution for renewable energy  generation.

Integrating renewable energy sources into everyday life is of paramount importance to a self-sustainable world. The Fall 2022 Small Scale Wind Turbine (SCWT) is a project that will design a portable wind turbine that harnesses wind as a natural resource to power devices. Prioritizing portability and efficiency, our turbine is designed to power camping appliances with a single overnight charge. Our design will be lightweight, cost-efficient, and easily accessible to display its practicality in camping situations. The SCWT project consists of designing and manufacturing processes to produce a turbine designed to meet engineering standards. 

This project encompasses one of many alternative solutions to a transition into clean and renewable energy sources. Wind turbines, when designed and constructed properly, can yield and store a substantial amount of electricity all from wind energy. To keep up with the high power demands of local electrical grids, most modern day turbines need to be immensely large in size, sometimes up to 500 ft tall, in order to generate enough electricity. Recently, more thought is being put into harnessing the efficiency of traditional turbines but on a smaller scale to satify more domestic electrical needs. The Small-Scale Wind Turbine projects here at UCI is involved with Collegiate Wind Competition and focuses on this small scale optomization of modern day giants.

The goal of the Fall 2022 Steerable Mechanical Walker project is to design and build a walking machine with an advanced leg system, a single drive motor for movement, and a single servo motor for steering. The design will be remotely controlled, and should allow the walker to move 1.5 ft/s and follow a circle of 6ft diameter. The team has to provide digital and physical models of two prototypes with test data and demonstration videos with it.

Background:

The pirpose of this project is to design a fully functioning solar cooker with a portable, efficient, easy-to-use option for food preparation under non-ideal conditions. In addition, we hope to understand companies' design, engineering, and manufacturing processes to sell products from this project. Finally, the knowledge obtained from this project will provide insight into how industries organize projects for engineers to complete under specific guidelines. 

Goals And Objectives:

This team is responsible for the design of an affordable and efficient heating, ventilation, and air conditioning system appropriate for an Accessory Dwelling Unit in a low-income neighborhood of Orange County. In addition to HVAC, the team is to determine if a thermal storage system is feasible given project requirements and constraints. This engineering subteam is part of the larger UCI and Orange Coast College partnership team competing in the Orange County Sustainability Decathlon. 

Background

UAV Forge is a multidisciplinary engineering design team that focuses on the design, manufacturing, programming and testing of autonomous aerial vehicles. The design aims to fulfill the constraints that allows the team to participate in the AUVSI SUAS 2021-2022 competition season. The AUVSI competition requires that the system’s UAV have autonomous flight capabilities, ability to perform object avoidance of stationary and dynamic objects, the ability to do object detection, localization, and classification. The system must also perform an airdrop task wherein UAV Forge will be manufacturing an assembly that will allow the UAV to drop payloads that safely land on designated targets. Though the emphasis for this year’s team is to perform well in the competition setting, the primary objective is to ensure the undergraduate students participating in the project apply their engineering skills to a compelling real-world problem.

We are a group of UCI engineering students with the goal to design, build, and fly a solar-assisted aircraft. Our project's aim is twofold: to prove the viability of solar power in airplanes/drones, and create a device that can assist in humanitarian aid missions caused by climate change. 

The CubeSat team at UCI is a student-led effort to launch a 2U nanosatellite into orbit to test two UCI research payloads. The satellite operates with five subsystems (Power/Payload, Communications, Avionics, Structures/Thermal, and Systems Engineering), in addition to housing two payloads. 

BACKGROUND:

AIAA Design, Build, Fly is a national competition held annually for colleges to design and build a remote control aircraft. The theme for this year’s competition is electronic warfare, where our design team, named the UCI Aerial Anteaters, will maximize the transportation range of an electronics payload and antenna. Until competition day in April, our team will design the aircraft to ensure each mission is successful while maximizing the number of points received. This year's missions include carrying an electronic payload for an endurance run, as well as attaching an antenna to the end of the aircraft’s wing to simulate a jamming antenna. This team consists of students from all year levels working to design and fabricate an aircraft for this competition.

UCI Rocket Project Solids Team will be building its first large collective rocket to compete in the 10k Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) Propulsion Category at the 2023 Spaceport America (SA) Cup. Our team is tasked to design an AirCore Atmospheric Sampling System that will collect and test air samples from different altitudes, allowing the team to compare the data and analyze its differences in gas concentrations. As a team, we aim to combine our interdisciplinary knowledge to meet the system requirements which include: weighing at least 4 kg, being able to withstand 10 Gs of force, be at least 3Us, ground tested, and survive 4 launch attempts. Our group aims to familiarize ourselves with the engineering design process and apply critical thinking to design a fully functional payload system for our rocket.

The project's aim is to test and validate XFOIL, a numerical analysis tool that calculates the lift and drag forces experienced by 2D airfoil shapes. The goal of this team is to design and execute an experimental campaign to acquire reliable data for the validation of XFOIL's numerical prediction method.  The campaign involves a set of carefully coordinated wind tunnel experiments and numerical calculations to document methods and results.  With the application of the acquired data, XFOIL’s predictability is assessed through the Technology Readiness Level (TRL) framework adapted to assess modeling and simulation methods.

From the time a creature is first born, food is the number one priority for its survival. Locating and capturing its food effectively is crucial, and in robotics this process is called foraging. Our goal is to develop the smallest functional aquatic autonomous robot capable of finding a power source to recharge. Remorus must swim autonomously in water and return back to its charging station before the battery runs out of charge. Potential applications of such technology include swarms of such robots performing various tasks. Several colleges and universities have designed their own micro Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV), like MIT’s Blue Bot and Harvard’s RoboBees which demonstrate the capabilities of robot swarms. The project may act as a proof of concept for future aquatic micro-robots and demonstrate the possibility of using AUV swarms to detect water contaminants and enter the human body to perform procedures.