College of Engineering students soaring high

Students from Utah State University's College of Engineering seem to be proving a point to the nation's other top engineering programs in recent months.

The college's Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Team just took first place at the 7th Annual Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International Student Unmanned Aerial Systems Competition in Maryland. And that first–place award comes just after the USU rocket team took top prizes at NASA's 2008–2009 University Student Launch Initiative in May. The rocket team also won “Best Vehicle Design” and the “Project Review Award.”

“Research excellence can be achieved when faculty spend quality time with students and research team building.”
— faculty advisor YangQuan Chen

Looking to improve from last year's second–place performance, Team USU's Open Source Autonomous Miniature Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Team (OSAM–UAV, pronounced “awesome U–A–V”) received the highest score in competition history. The team also won the first prize in flight performance, first in journal paper and third in the Test Review Design presentation.

“The team nailed the competition,” said team leader Chris Hall. “We had an excellent flight and were very organized, even ready to take care of problems on the fly. There is no doubt in my mind that this is a direct result of the amount of preparation, testing, and forethought we put into the project. Our team really deserved to win, and we won very definitively.”

There were teams registered from Canada, India, Puerto Rico and the United States, including teams from the University of California at Los Angeles, University of Texas, Cornell University, University of Delhi, MIT and University of Alberta.

In the recent competition, USU's OSAM–UAV received $14,000 in prize money and an invitation to visit Patuxent River Naval Base for a tour of the Global Hawk UAV.

“This first place award is one of the indicators of our research excellence in unmanned aerial vehicle research programs that we have been building since 2006,” said faculty advisor YangQuan Chen, an associate professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering. “Research excellence can be achieved when faculty spend quality time with students and research team building.”

As winner of the rocket competition, the USU team receives $5,000 from ATK and an invitation from NASA to attend a space shuttle launch at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida this fall.

USU students beat out 18 other American college and university teams that participated in the challenge, including Arizona State University, Georgia Institute of Technology, Vanderbilt University, Florida Institute of Technology and Alabama A&M University.

“It has been the most difficult, yet rewarding project we as engineers have worked on, and we wouldn't have given it up for anything,” said team member Nick McKee. “The team really feels that not only did we build a rocket, but we built the skills each of us will use for the rest of our lives as mechanical and aerospace engineers.”

The launch contest challenges student teams to design, build and fly reusable rockets with scientific payloads one mile high and return them safely to Earth. NASA's competition judges then evaluate each team's rocket design, flight data and final written report about payload results and overall experience.

—Latashia Redhouse