More than 20 undergraduate teams used an engineering expo to show off their inventions, which included an environmental monitoring robot and an automatic trash sorter.
LONDON — “This was thrown off Tower Bridge I would say about 12 to 15 times,” said Owen Cutler, as he gestured to the space-age looking robot standing in front of him.
“At least that,” chimed in Jolie Bilodeau, one of his teammates.
The two were part of a student team of engineers at Northeastern University in London who put together an environmental monitoring robot. The idea behind their creation was to design a machine that could be flown into potentially contaminated areas and take readings so as to avoid humans having to access toxic sites.
But to do that, the engineering undergraduates knew their invention had to be able to withstand being flown in and landing without human assistance.
“We dropped it off the side of Tower Bridge using a parachute, and then it would land using its legs, which telescope inward,” continued Cutler, a computer science major from Chicago. “There are a series of different foams that cushion the impact. After our trials, the only damage was just to a bit of paint, so it’s pretty rugged — and that was the goal.”
The white sensor-laden robot can monitor relative altitude, air pressure, humidity, temperature, gas resistance and light emittance. “And with that, we’re able to tell a lot more about the air quality in the environment,” added Cutler.
Cutler and Bilodeau, a chemical engineering major from San Francisco, were displaying their project as part of a freshman engineering showcase at Devon House, the main teaching building on Northeastern’s London campus.
More than 20 teams used the April expo to show off their projects, which included self-made water filter systems, health monitoring wristbands for babies and a firefighting robot that used a heat detector and baking soda to put out flames.
In January, Razieh Jalal Abadi, assistant professor in engineering, set the teams the task of researching and coming up with a product that could fill a gap in the market and that they could fashion and make within three months.
“I told them, ‘There is no point in just repeating something that has happened in the market because it is already out there,’” she said.
“The other important point is that we didn’t tell them what to do. They have to use what they have learned to solve a real-world engineering problem.”
Sophia Economides, associate professor in engineering, hailed the work on offer as “very clever, very inspirational” as she inspected the final products. “The students worked well together and put in very long hours,” she added.
Looking to provide a solution for everyday spillages were Daniel Brightman, Joseph Oshins, Ibrahim Rogers and Kian Dos Santos with their floor-cleaning robot.
The mechanical engineering students used a microcontroller chip to program a Wi-Fi router onto a robot with wheels so it could be connected to online controls. Users with access to the Wi-Fi connection are then able to remotely steer the robot to any floor spillages and command it to lower its towel-covered arm to clean up spills.
“The user base that we imagined for this robot were people that struggled with mobility issues, such as bed-ridden hospital patients or people living in retirement homes, so that they can control and clean the room remotely,” said Oshins, a Seattle native.
After a delivery mistake caused delays, the team had only three days to bring their idea for the robot to life. “We were pretty stressed,” admitted Oshin.
Kailin Downey and Alexandra Hill were inspired by their university environment for their design. Their CTR robot — an abbreviation for compost, trash and recycling — came about after they noticed that non-recyclable waste was being disposed of in recycling bins, and vice versa, on campus. They wanted to create a way to eradicate that issue by taking the decision out of the hands of students, faculty and staff.
“The concept was to eliminate the need for the user to figure out which waste receptacle they are supposed to put their trash in,” said Hill, an electrical engineering student from New Hampshire.
“There had been issues at Devon House with improper waste sorting, leading to environmental problems and other different issues.”
Downey, an electrical and computing engineering major from Connecticut, added, “If that happens, then they can’t recycle what is in the waste disposal unit, even if other things in there are actually recyclable. They can’t reuse materials that have been put in the wrong area.”
Their team created a netted receptacle that can hang over waste bins on campus. Users then place their trash onto the CTR robot’s arm and it will sort what bin it needs to be placed into.
“We programmed a machine learning algorithm,” explains Hill, “to tell the difference between compost, trash and recycling in Devon House by taking images of waste receptacles and then labeling them and putting that into a local algorithm.
“We then have a webcam, which is meant to automatically tell what the item is and then send a signal via the YouTube module to our robot so that it autonomously moves to the correct module.”
Difficulties with the webcam meant the robot was missing some functionality but Hill said that, with another few weeks of fine-tuning and investment into a more powerful microchip, they were confident the landfill-reducing contraption could be ready for public use.
Jalal Abadi said project setbacks were as much a part of preparing for the real-world as succeeding. “This is how they learn, this is the real world,” she said. “You need to know what your capabilities are and be aware of the time that you have, the money you have available — these types of things.
“To be honest, if some of them couldn’t do all of the things that they planned to do, that is also a lesson. That is part of an engineering project — sometimes there is a failure, sometimes there is success. That is all part of the learning. The important thing is how they look to solve this problem.”