Drones

Up, Up and Away

Anonymous — Tue, 01 Oct 2019 06:00:00 +0000

Up, Up and Away Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 10/01/2019 - 00:00

Of course the engineers invited the drones.

They performed brilliantly.

Given a starring role in the formal Aug. 26 debut of ��ƷSM��ӰƬ’s $10 million Aerospace Engineering Sciences Building, the pair of Phantom 4 Pros did just what they were supposed to — hoist a six-foot white ribbon from the lawn and gently deliver it to the front of the dignitaries’ stage. There, leaning over the edge, benefactor Ann Smead snapped her scissors. A cheer went up, and so did the drones, which shot skyward.

The new 178,000-square-foot East Campus building, home of the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences, includes a bioastronautics lab, a payload operations center with a real-time communications link to the International Space Station and an indoor drone testing space.

Days earlier, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine dropped by, meeting with students, professors, university leaders and business executives. NASA provides more research money to ��ƷSM��ӰƬ than to any other public university, and it spends more in Colorado than in any other state.

“Science books have been rewritten based on what comes out of Colorado,” Bridenstine said.

Photo by Glenn Asakawa

The Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences includes a bioastronautics lab, a payload operations center with a real-time communications link to the International Space Station and an indoor drone testing space.

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Campus News Briefs — Winter 2018

Anonymous — Sat, 01 Dec 2018 20:23:00 +0000

Campus News Briefs — Winter 2018 Anonymous (not verified) Sat, 12/01/2018 - 13:23

Campus Living

2021

Year ��ƷSM��ӰƬ will finish new housing master plan

Percent of first-year students live on campus

Percent of all undergrad and graduate students live on campus

775

Graduate students live on campus

330

Students in Sewall, CU's oldest residence hall

Floors in the new Williams Village east residence hall, opening fall 2019

CU Engineering: More and More Women

The first-year class in the College of Engineering & Applied Sciences is 40 percent women in 2018-2019, an all-time high and major milestone in Dean Bobby Braun’s march toward gender parity among students in the college, ��ƷSM��ӰƬ’s second-biggest. On average, women make up about 20 percent of students in U.S. engineering schools, despite constituting well above 50 percent of all college students.

Heard Around Campus

As our antibiotics work less and less, we risk essentially going back to a period 200 years ago when even a minor infection could mean death.”

— CU scientist Corrie Detweiler, whose team is exploring compounds that can rejuvenate existing antibiotics.

Drones to the Rescue

When disaster strikes, it may be the drones that save us.

Armed with a $4.5 million federal grant, ��ƷSM��ӰƬ and partners will test themselves against six other teams in a national competition to develop advanced search-and-rescue drones. The winning team walks away with $2 million.

In an initial mock rescue, drones guided by the ��ƷSM��ӰƬ team’s software will zoom through miles of steam tunnels seeking disaster survivors.

Later they’ll audition in tunnels like those of the New York subway system and in caves.

Called the Subterranean Challenge and sponsored by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the competition ends in 2021. The CU team includes CU Denver and Boston-based Scientific Systems Company.

Get more details.

CU Engineering's latest milestone, campus living by the numbers and CU's new drone challenge.

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Winter 2018

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Drone Racer

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Mar 2018 18:30:00 +0000

Drone Racer Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 03/01/2018 - 11:30

Christie Sounart

Before they brought him money and a measure of celebrity, drones offered Jordan Temkin (Art’14) a way to stand out.

Eager to distinguish himself from his fellow art students during his senior year at CU, Temkin realized he could use drones to capture footage from unique angles. A skier and photographer from Seattle, he envisioned aerial action shots of his friends on mountain bikes and skis.

All he needed was a drone of his own.

So he built one, using inexpensive parts he bought online and a frame fashioned on his 3D printer.

“It took me about six months before I was actually having fun with it,” said Temkin, 26. “It was more frustrated tinkering up until then.”

After a few troublesome attempts, Temkin successfully flew his drone in September 2014 with a GoPro camera strapped to it. Standing in Boulder’s Chautauqua Park, he pulled on a pair of goggles that live-streamed Flatirons footage as he controlled the drone from the ground.

He felt as if he himself was being transported into the air.

“I absolutely fell in love with that,” he said. “Just the idea of being able to fly.”

The adrenaline rush was the same one he felt while ski racing. And he wanted more of it.

The rewards have been more than he imagined — cash prizes, free trips, a TV show on ESPN and two racing contracts with the Drone Racing League (DRL).

The transition from art student to drone racer was swift.

After graduating in 2014, Temkin worked full time at a Boulder sandwich shop and continued building, flying and racing drones with a few others around Colorado.

Unlike his leisurely flights through Boulder’s canyons and over trees, competitive racing required him to master tricky maneuvers such as careening through hoops and around obstacles at speeds sometimes reaching more than 100 miles per hour. He always wore goggles that allowed him to see only what the drone saw, referred to in the drone world as flying “FPV,” or first-person view. Crashes were — and still are — common.

As drones became more familiar in society at large, so did competitive races. The cash prizes grew. And Temkin often emerged the winner.

He quit his job at the sandwich shop, moved to Fort Collins — which was more drone-friendly than Boulder — and entered races across the U.S., many of which featured up to 150 competitors.

Temkin’s performances caught the attention of the New York-based Drone Racing League, founded in January 2016 by a former Tough Mudder executive.

The league invited Temkin to compete in its inaugural season against 11 other racers in a series of five competitions across the U.S. He readily accepted. The races were filmed in locations as diverse as the Miami Dolphins’ football stadium, the former Bell Labs headquarters in New Jersey and an abandoned Los Angeles mall.

I fell in love with the idea of being able to fly.”

The 10-episode series aired on ESPN in fall 2016. It highlighted competitors’ top-speed thrills as they raced through the dark venues and darted among flashy, neon-lit obstacles. The inevitable crashes were spectacular.

Temkin won the championship, its one-year, $100,000 contract and the title “world’s first professional drone pilot.”

Temkin is the world’s first professional drone pilot.

“Jordan is able to stay in the zone and concentrate when it counts,” said Ryan Gury, DRL’s director of product and technologies. “I remember his first race at Bell Labs. He crashed out of the first few heats and was doing quite poorly. When I approached him to see how he was managing, he smiled and said, ‘All good, man. I just have to win the rest.’ And then he did.”

Boosted by the ESPN broadcast and the fast-growing drone community, Temkin emerged as a leading figure in drone racing.

In DRL’s second season, he again took the championship — filmed in London — and another $100,000, year-long contract. His parents were in attendance. All told, DRL’s first two seasons attracted more than 55 million broadcast views in more than 75 countries, said Gury.

“I can see myself doing this for as long as I can get away with it,” said Temkin, who adopted the pilot name “JET,” his initials.

Temkin occasionally prepares himself for competition by setting up a course filled with hula hoops and soccer goals with the nets cut out. But that’s not his favorite way to practice.

Instead — as he did at the start of it all — he prefers to grab his drone, drive to the mountains, slip on his goggles and fall into the reverie of flight.

“I get to go to the very top of mountains,” he said.

Photos courtesy Drone Racing League

Jordan Temkin is a $100,000 pro.

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Inquiry - Brian Argrow

Anonymous — Fri, 01 Sep 2017 16:44:20 +0000

Inquiry - Brian Argrow Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 09/01/2017 - 10:44

Eric Gershon

Dr. Drone

Brian Argrow, the new chair of ��ƷSM��ӰƬ’s Ann and H.J. Smead Aerospace Engineering Sciences department, talks Mars, drones, integrity and why he always books a window seat.

If you could visit any planet in our solar system, which would you pick?

Mars, of course. When I see images from the surface, they often remind me of places I’ve visited in the American Southwest, and I have so many memories from reading sci-fi books such as Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles. It would be fascinating to see just how accurate my youthful imagination was.

You’re an expert in unmanned aircraft systems (drones). Do you think they’ll become part of everyday life in America?

If you consider the battlefield, tactical and strategic missions of the U.S. military for the past 20 years or so, drones have already been an indispensable part of the lives of many Americans — but only recently in America. The introduction of the FAA’s “Part 107” regulation last year finally gave a relatively straightforward path for legitimate drone uses for flights in the U.S. below 400-ft. altitude and away from airports.

I use “legitimate” to separate those who intend to observe the current regulations from the “rogues” who have no intention to abide by the regulations.

NASA also is focused on developing an air-traffic management system in anticipation of the continued proliferation of small drones.

How soon and for what uses?

Small drones have become ubiquitous enough to barely be noticeable. You might have seen News Channel 4 in Denver advertising their “Drone 4,” which is just a little DJI Phantom-4 quadrotor.

A partial list of CU’s recent drone applications and missions includes atmospheric measurements and profiling, an aerial photogrammetry survey of Chimney Rock National Monument, delivery of real-time pre-storm weather data to the National Weather Service and intercepting supercell thunderstorms in the Great Plains.

A multitude of civilian applications includes search and rescue; powerline, railroad, bridge and river inspection; estuary surveys; large aquatic mammal counts; anti-poaching; and blood and plasma delivery.

What aerospace endeavor that you’re aware of seems to offer the greatest promise for humankind?

As much as I see drones changing the world, I suppose if I had to say what holds the greatest promise to humanity, it would have to be spacecraft with the potential to spread humankind to other planets. Of course, Mars is the first target.

��ƷSM��ӰƬ’s aerospace program ranks among America’s best. How would you like to see it change or grow?

Once, innovation was primarily within specific, well-defined disciplines. Today’s innovation is mostly at their intersections.

For example, today’s drone technologies are emerging from aeronautics, robotics, intelligent systems and spacecraft (GPS) technologies, with increasingly autonomous technologies starting to emerge in spacecraft, air traffic control and ground-based systems, such as cars.

Our aerospace program continues to grow because of our diversity in disciplines and research, our willingness to collaborate and innovate at intersections and our desire to be leaders in all aspects of engineering education.

What qualities make for a first-rate aerospace engineer?

Curiosity and integrity. Curiosity drives the imaginations at the foundation of engineering design. Integrity because, if we are to entrust our lives to the technologies of aerospace engineers, we must first have trust in the people that are the engineers.

What first drew you to aerospace engineering?

My first love was astronomy, as far back as I can remember. The Gemini and Apollo programs absolutely captured my imagination. I was 8, about to be 9, for the first moon landing. I was similarly fascinated by the NASA X-plane program, especially the X-15. If it had anything to do with astronomy, and if it involved craft that flew fast or high — preferably fast and high — then it had my undivided attention.

When you travel by air: Aisle or window, and how do you pass the time?

Window seat. When I first started traveling as a professor, I thought it was important for me to have an aisle seat, since I was fancying myself as a businessman. It only took a few trips and I was back in the window seat where I belonged — where I had a clear view of the wings and engines, and great views of things on the ground. Even though I spend most of my time working on my computer, I still look out and down often.

Condensed and edited by Eric Gershon

Photo by Glenn Asakawa

Brian Argrow, the new chair of ��ƷSM��ӰƬ’s Ann and H.J. Smead Aerospace Engineering Sciences department, talks Mars, drones, integrity and why he always books a window seat.

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Infographic: Storm Chaser

Anonymous — Wed, 01 Jun 2016 22:12:00 +0000

Infographic: Storm Chaser Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 06/01/2016 - 16:12

Unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), often called drones, serve an expanding number of recreational, commercial, military and scientific uses. Researchers at CU-Boulder developed a UAS called Tempest that’s meant for tough duty — flying into the heart of extreme storms called supercells to assess them in all their fury. Battery-powered and auto-piloted, Tempest can measure temperature, relative humidity, wind speed and atmospheric pressure — and may one day help identify emerging tornadoes.

Facts about Tempest

Top Speed: 100 mph Maximum wind speed Tempest has encountered so far: 60 mph Weight: 12-15 lbs, depending on payload Made of: Carbon fiber, wood, fiberglass Where Tempest rests: RECUV Fabrication Lab Systems Integration Lab or Indoor Flight Lab at CU-Boulder Manufactured by: Skip Miller Models, Boulder Battery type: Lithium Maximum flight duration per charge: 60-90 minutes, depending on weather conditions Number of Tempests currently owned by CU-Boulder: Three Tempest experts at CU-Boulder: Brian Argrow and Eric Frew

Supercells: Supercells are an extreme type of rotating thunderstorm that can generate tornadoes

Why more information aboutsupercells is valuable: Predicting whether they’ll lead to tornadoes could aid disaster preparations

Unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), often called drones, serve an expanding number of recreational, commercial, military and scientific uses.

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Drones

Up, Up and Away

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Campus News Briefs — Winter 2018

Campus Living

CU Engineering: More and More Women

Heard Around Campus

Drones to the Rescue

Related Articles

Drone Racer

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Inquiry - Brian Argrow

Dr. Drone

If you could visit any planet in our solar system, which would you pick?

You’re an expert in unmanned aircraft systems (drones). Do you think they’ll become part of everyday life in America?

How soon and for what uses?

What aerospace endeavor that you’re aware of seems to offer the greatest promise for humankind?

��ƷSM����ӰƬ’s aerospace program ranks among America’s best. How would you like to see it change or grow?

What qualities make for a first-rate aerospace engineer?

What first drew you to aerospace engineering?

When you travel by air: Aisle or window, and how do you pass the time?

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Infographic: Storm Chaser

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��ƷSM��ӰƬ’s aerospace program ranks among America’s best. How would you like to see it change or grow?