Photo by: Megan Westervelt
Everyone knows that not all classes at DU are a cakewalk, but this one is especially demanding.
“I spent 40 hours outside of class in the last two weeks just doing this and it’s a three credit class,” said Ben Natala, electrical engineering major.
Junior Kai Erspamer said that his group stays at the lab as late as they are allowed to be there.
“I’d say I spend about five or 10 times as much time for this class as I do for other classes,” said Tyler Grubb, mechanical engineering major.
The class is Integration. The duration is two quarters, winter and spring. The task is to build a bomb disposal robot. And the students are up and coming engineers.
Third-year engineering students have been working all quarter on constructing robots. In groups of three or four, the project is a collaborative effort between the mechanical, electrical and computer science engineers.
The robot must autonomously navigate to the bomb, meaning the robots cannot be controlled with a remote control.
“You have to cut the wire or pick up the bomb and move it to a safe location,” said Grubb.
The bomb must be moved at least 100 feet. Other requirements for the project are that the engineers cannot spend more than $300 on the robot. The robot cannot exceed a weight of 25 pounds and must sustain an eight foot drop onto a concrete surface when packed in its ground-handling container. The bomb weighs up to 10 pounds and ranges from a 12 to 24 inch cube.
“First quarter wasn’t as bad because it was all design work, coming up with ideas and putting it into engineering drawings,” said Grubb. “But this quarter, building a prototype has been pretty time consuming.”
Another student found that the design part of the process was the hardest.
“We just wanted to come into the shop and use our prior experience and just throw things together,” said Natala. “We actually have to design things so it’s kind of shifting from doing the math in our first few years to actually doing the design process.”
Despite all the time it took to build a robot, the project has proved to be rewarding for participants.
“Every time we complete a little thing and it works out perfectly, its high fives, adrenaline and then back to work,” said Erspamer.
“When you see it doing what it’s actually supposed to do its pretty rewarding, despite the amount of time it takes,” said Natala.
Throughout the process students learned that experience is vital when doing complex projects such as this one.
“There are a lot of things, like noise in the wires or something that nobody with our experience can anticipate but it’s relatively simply tasks, just a lot of them,” said Erspamer.
“I think for some of the mechanical analysis we didn’t really have enough information or experience but that’s stuff is really complex,” said Natala.
Every engineer agreed the project demands a lot of their free time.
“I think some groups have worked all night,” Natala said. “We are in the machine shop until midnight and around then Campus Safety comes and kicks us out if we’re here too late. We start losing our minds and cut off our hands or something.”
The engineers will find out if their robots were successful this Thursday when each group’s robot will attempt to dispose of the bomb. Most seem thankful that this project is nearing its end.
“I want it to come soon. I’m excited, but we’d always want more time,” said Natala. “My girlfriend hates it and she threatened to leave me, hopefully not but I have to do it.”
