Team Engagement

1. Team Engagement

1.1 Team Formation and Project Operation

The formation process for this year’s Real World Design Challenge team was collectively decided upon by the members of last year’s team as the best practice for developing a collaborative and effective team with a wide range of skill-sets. Challenge participants from last year were given special preference in the selection process as they have already demonstrated their dedication and have prior experience with the rigor of the challenge process. Last year’s team members were given the choice of continuing in the challenge, and membership was supplemented by new recruits. New members this year were selected based on their prior record of work in engineering, science, and math classes as evaluated through conversations with their teachers in these subject areas (Figure 1.1a). As every student at ESUMS is required to take four engineering courses during high school, this proved to be an effective method of measuring a potential team member’s work ethic and communication, skills that are critical to success both in engineering classes and in the Real World Design Challenge. In contrast to this year’s method, the first challenge team from ESUMS two years ago was formed based on mandatory participation in a classwide project. The notable difference in success between these two teams has proven that obligatory participation is an ineffective motivator and has validated the efficacy of the team’s current method of member selection.

The team’s engineering advisor approved all team member selections and had the ability to veto any member’s application for entry based on their prior work ethic or problems with their engineering coursework. Once a full complement of team members had been selected, incumbent team members explained the challenge process to the new members during the first meeting, and the team assigned group roles and responsibilities, as shown below.

Nora Heaphy, Project Manager

Nora Heaphy was chosen as project manager this year, as she had demonstrated her ability to facilitate group coordination and delegate responsibilities last year in her role as communications specialist. She has previous experience directing class projects and has completed prior work in aviation-related design, including the Sikorsky Helicopter 2050 Design Challenge, in which she won first place for a sustainable electric helicopter. As project manager, Nora began recruiting team members and discussing this year’s challenge as soon as the school year began. The team developed a tentative timeline long before the challenge documentation was released, and later made only small adjustments to account for setbacks. Setting a timeline and creating a Gantt chart early in the process allowed the team to more effectively manage their time than in previous years, staying on track throughout the challenge timeframe.

Nora’s official responsibilities as project manager included managing the project plan, deliverables, and overarching project vision, as well as handling challenge logistics, delegating tasks and responsibilities, ensuring all team members had the resources necessary to complete their assigned tasks, organizing project components into a final comprehensive project, and guiding group decisions towards final designs. She worked to coordinate group efforts and ensure the effective synthesis of group writings into a cohesive final work with consistent style and form. She also served as a single point of contact between the team members, mentors, and Pratt & Whitney facilitators, managing logistics for team meetings, the Kickoff Event, and the challenge presentations.

Maximillian Fleischmann, Simulations Engineer

Maximillian Fleischmann assumed his former role as simulations engineer, as he has two prior years of experience as simulations engineer for the Real World Design Challenge team and is extremely knowledgeable about the subject matter and software operation. Maximillian's academic experience in this area includes significant CAD modeling work using Blender, PTC Creo, Autodesk Maya, and Autodesk Inventor. He also has significant personal experience flying drones outside of school, having taught himself the information necessary to obtain FAA certification. He fulfilled all the requirements for the role of simulations engineer, and also helped to check other team members’ work for technical accuracy and consistency with design decisions and component selections. He also acted as an assistive resource for Irsal Tomasati, a new member who worked as the systems and test engineer.

Irsal Tomasati, Simulations and Test Engineer

Irsal Tomasati has significant experience in engineering and design, having taken advanced courses in these subjects, including PLTW certified Principles of Engineering, Engineering Design and Development, and most notably Digital Electronics, but he was new to the challenge this year. Working as systems and test engineer and simulations engineer respectively, Irsal and Max collaborated to define aspects of the project such as architecture, modules, interface, and workflow, as well as checking parts consistency, directing design production, reviewing and evaluating proposed designs, testing prototypes, reviewing case studies of similar designs, executing revisions, creating all CAD models, and coordinating and troubleshooting all software issues.

Dana Joseph, Project Mathematician

Dana Joseph was a former participant of the challenge and assumed the role of project mathematician concurrently with Shreya Patel. She has previously taken both AP Calculus and AP Statistics and has demonstrated her technical knowledge and analytical skills in both these fields. She intends to study biomedical engineering in her postsecondary education, and her role in the team will facilitate her success in this career. As project mathematicians, Dana and Shreya conducted an evaluation of how the design fits with known mathematical principles, and also wrote the business plan of the notebook and performed all calculations relating to profits, costs, benefits, and product life-cycle future costs. Dana worked as project mathematician on last year’s team and therefore was able to provide valuable insight into the operations required.

Danayit Mekonnen, Project Scientist

Danayit has significant prior experience in drone construction through a drone assembly challenge in which she participated last year. She and fellow teammate Shreya Patel built a drone entirely from scratch in their Applied Engineering class and eventually tested its flight capabilities in the field. Their prior experience as contestants in unmanned aviation challenges further demonstrates their interest in aeronautical engineering. As one of the project scientists, Danayit was required to leverage her scientific expertise to translate scientific principles into an engineering design and communicate with external expert resources, ensuring the scientific validity of the design and execution.

Shreya Patel, Project Scientist and Mathematician

Shreya also worked as project mathematician because of her high level of expertise in advanced mathematics courses and business plan creation for other class projects of similar scale. She has completed AP Calculus and is currently taking AP Statistics. She worked as a project scientist because of the knowledge that she has learned throughout her science classes, all the way up to AP Chemistry and AP Physics. She is also a teacher’s assistant for an advanced robotics class and a chemistry class.

Kenechi Nkwo, Communications Specialist

Finally, Kenechi Nkwo was this year’s communications specialist, conducting research and expert interviews as well as maintaining contact with the team mentors. Kenechi has a specific interest in brainstorming and research methods and has gained significant experience from her role as team leader of a prior class project, making her an ideal candidate for the role.

Kenechi’s responsibilities as communications specialist required her to create all documents, videos, and presentations for the project including a promotional banner for visiting Sikorsky engineers and a website and social media to facilitate external funding and support. She was also responsible for communicating with mentors, contacting experts, conducting research via primary sources, compiling the final notebook, and checking for mechanical errors and stylistic inconsistency in collaboration with the project manager.

Figure 1.1a. Team members at RWDC Kickoff Event: (left to right) Dr. Didacus Oparaocha (advisor), Kenechi Nkwo, Nora Heaphy, Shreya Patel, Danayit Mekonnen, Irsal Tomasati, Daniel Janucik (legacy team), Maximillian Fleischmann, Dana Joseph (not pictured)

Last year, the team roles and responsibilities were more integrated, with multiple people filling multiple roles and a large degree of overlap. The team discovered that this method of delegating tasks involved too much confusion of responsibility, with a few members assuming a disproportionate quantity of the workload. To remedy that error, this year the team developed a more stratified division of roles, so that there were only a few cases in which multiple people filled the same role or one person filled multiple roles. This system does not discourage inter-role collaboration, but rather ensures a fair and equitable assignment of responsibilities.

This year, the the legacy team formed a key part of ESUMS Aviators’ long-term challenge strategy. The purpose of the legacy was to train a group of underclassmen in requisite skills and challenge experience to pursue a full project next year, at which time, every member of the current team will have graduated. Because the current team is comprised entirely of seniors, it was necessary to engage underclassmen early in the process to secure the continuation of the ESUMS Real World Design Challenge program. This year, the Real World Design Challenge project was integrated with the ESUMS Engineering Design and Development course so that team members could use the challenge as their engineering capstone project, and the current team expects this arrangement to continue in the future, with the hope that RWDC will eventually become a capstone alternative class. Because of this arrangement, the team was initially oversubscribed with nine members, although the upper team member limit is set at seven. Two members therefore agreed to step down from the challenge team but continued to pursue an auxiliary role as part of their capstone project. These two members, Daniel Janucik and Ivan Campos, formed the basis for the Real World Design Challenge legacy team. The responsibilities of Daniel and Ivan included recruiting underclassmen, providing educational materials such as the challenge statement and detailed background documents, and guiding students through a series of mock challenges designed to prepare them for full participation in subsequent years.

1.2 Acquiring and Engaging Mentors

The team recognized the importance of identifying and contacting mentors early in the challenge process in order to develop working relationships and obtain expert input during the first stages of the challenge. With that goal in mind, the project manager contacted the team’s mentors from last year immediately upon starting the new school year, while team member composition was still being finalized. Last year’s team agreed that their mentors, Monica Arias, Matthew Williston, and Kerwin Low, were exceptionally helpful in guiding project development, coordinating with the challenge organizers, and reviewing design concepts and written work. Regrettably, Matthew Williston and Kerwin Low informed the team that they were unable to continue as mentors this year due to a time conflict. However, Monica Arias was able to continue along with another Pratt & Whitney engineer, Kevin Zacherra. Obtaining this information at the earliest possible opportunity was critical to effective time management and team planning.

After first communicating with this year’s mentors, the project manager constructed a survey to determine team availability and optimal scheduling for group meetings, the results of which were passed on to the mentors. The team first met formally with their mentors at the RWDC Kickoff Event, at which time they scheduled a series of future meetings and set goals and milestones for those meetings. The team members met in person once or twice per week, either during EDD class or lunch periods, and met with their mentors approximately every two weeks. This facilitated effective time management and enabled the team to stay on track with their initial timeline throughout the duration of the project. The presence of the mentors was crucial for establishing due dates for predefined deliverables and spurring group brainstorming and collaboration.

The team worked to leverage their mentors’ knowledge and expertise during the challenge by developing questions originating through research that were then posed to the mentors during meetings and through email in order to best utilize them as an expert resource. The topics of these questions varied, but a common theme was the technical aspect of the UAV design including materials. durability requirements, and life-cycle considerations. The engineering knowledge and professional experience of the team mentors led to productive conversations surrounding the development of the project and was essential to cooperative revisions of the engineering notebook. Additionally, at the beginning of the challenge, the project manager requested the judge’s feedback and scoring rubrics from last year’s competition and used these to guide the development of the engineering notebook. This feedback allowed the team to identify areas of weakness, improve in places where easy points were lost, and better prepare to address this year’s challenge.

1.3 State the Project Goal

The 2017 Real World Design Challenge asks teams to develop an unmanned aerial system (UAS) that will increase agricultural productivity by serving as a multipurpose tool for farmers. The system must include an aerial vehicle, payload component, and ground control station, and must be able to complete a minimum of three predefined missions with minimal training and support on the part of the farmer. The UAS must also adhere to the FAA Small Unmanned Aircraft Regulations. Therefore, the aircraft must weigh less than 55 lbs, must always stay within the operator’s line-of-sight, and must fly no higher than 500 ft above ground level and no faster than 87 knots. These restrictions were particularly critical for the team to consider in the initial stages of design process, as the team decided to build and test a prototype of their drone and needed to adhere to these regulations not just in theory, but in practice.

The Challenge Statement and supporting documentation provides three required missions that the UAS must perform: a logistics mission, a survey mission, and a dash mission. The logistics mission requires that the UAV transport an 8 lb payload to a location 1 mile away and then return to the starting point without refueling or recharging. This would enable farmers to quickly transport equipment or samples from one part of a field to another, rather than relying on slower ground equipment like trucks for these logistical tasks. As the team’s UAVs are powered by renewable energy, this also minimizes fuel costs and emissions from other forms of transportation. The survey mission requires that the aircraft be capable of staying in the air for 30 minutes and surveying an area of 0.25 square miles. This involves the selection of an appropriate HD camera to serve as the payload, ideally one that maximizes capability and quality while minimizing cost and power. This mission fulfills a function similar to last year’s challenge, potentially moisture detection, pest control, or livestock monitoring. Finally, the dash mission is an expedited version of the logistics mission, in which the aircraft must carry a payload of 2 lbs a distance of 1.5 miles as fast as possible within the FAA speed limits. This mission could enable the farmer to take quick sensor readings as needed or transport small equipment more efficiently.

Teams were also allowed to define additional missions in order to improve the business case and commercial viability of the product. The team decided to incorporate three additional missions into the design with the intention of maximizing the objective function. The team’s objective function analysis showed that each additional mission increases the value of the function by an incrementally decreasing amount. In comparing objective function values with estimated effort needed to include additional missions, the project mathematicians determined that three additional missions was the optimal value for balancing both constraints. These missions supplement the predefined logistics, survey, and dash missions, and improve the product’s versatility of function and subsequent attractiveness to consumers.

The business case for the design is based on a comprehensive market analysis and calculations of profits in a five-year period. The commercial viability of the product is quantified in the objective function (Equation 1.3), which seeks to maximize the average of five functions: effective completion of the logistics mission, survey mission, and dash mission, additional missions, and business profitability. The first three are calculated based on their adherence to the requirements defined in the challenge documentation, and the additional missions function receives a value of 0.5 even with only the three required missions, but can be increased with additional missions. The business profitability is a function of the operating expense and total revenue over the five-year period. The relative importance of each function component to the objective function and business case is to be determined by the team’s statistical analysis.

The challenge permitted teams to choose their own target crop based on their region. The team chose to focus on corn again this year in order to use research and expert contacts from last year’s project. This design accommodates the need for cost-effectiveness, efficiency, and ease-of-operation, with particular consideration given to the environmental, geographic, and agricultural conditions of the region of Connecticut. The team is expected to develop, analyze, and defend their component selections, system design, theory of operation, mission selection, and business case. In this engineering notebook, the team has documented their task analysis, strategy and design, costs, and alternative uses.

1.4 Tool Set-up/Learning/Validation

The team faced significant issues attempting to use the PTC Creo and MathCAD softwares to work on the project while in school. The school computers are all either incompatible with the software or are networked to prevent non-school-approved applications from being installed. Therefore, the team determined that they could only work on the creation and analysis of Creo designs after school, remotely collaborating with other team members, or in class, using personal computers. The team was able to find a compatible equivalent for MathCAD that was capable of running on school computers. It had sufficient albeit limited capabilities for calculations, but all files could subsequently be moved to personal computers for final analysis in MathCAD.

Installing and operating Creo required a more complex solution. The team wished to access Creo in school in order to conduct a live-conference between the team members working in the program, enabling them to suggest refinements to each other’s models in real time, but this was inhibited by the school’s computer restrictions. The team’s solution to this problem was to install Creo on personal devices collectively during one of the initial team meetings. During each subsequent team meeting, the project engineers discussed what they would be able to deliver for the next session and agreed upon goals and deliverables. Once the models were created, they then exported them to a format such as (.STL) or (.OBJ), so the models could be imported into Blender, a modeling program that the team can access on the school computers. Blender-enhanced models were then displayed as a way to gather live feedback during meetings. No refinements were ever made in Blender, as the program does not possess the same mathematical and modeling capabilities as Creo, but this provided a way to record the progress of the team’s solutions. This effectively achieved the team’s goal of having a live conference feedback system for the project engineers, while still enabling the team members to operate within the constraints of the school’s computer restrictions.

All team members who had previously participated in the challenge were already familiar with the software, but many needed to refresh their knowledge by watching online video tutorials and asking the mentors for help with specific functions. The team members who were new to the challenge primarily learned to use the software from the documentation available on the Real World Design Challenge website and were assisted in this endeavor by their more experienced teammates. This training was most critical for Irsal in his role as engineer and Shreya in her role as mathematician. They received significant support from the other team members early in the challenge process, enabling them to capably use the software to fulfill their roles in the team. As this method of team tutoring will not be viable next year with a team of entirely new members, this year’s team is currently creating brief documents describing the best way to install the software and providing key resources for troubleshooting.

In order to maintain the effectiveness of last year’s communication system, the team chose to continue using Google Drive as their primary means of communication for this project. Google Drive has previously been an effective tool for group collaboration in other school projects, so the team decided to adapt it for use in the Real World Design Challenge. Due to the time constraints of the challenge, the team determined that this system was more conducive to efficiency and coordination than PTC Windchill, as all members were already familiar with its capabilities. Additionally, the merging of the team’s Real World Design Challenge project with the Engineering Design and Development capstone project made Google Drive the best communication option, as assignments for both projects could occupy the same space.

1.5 Impact on STEM

Nora Heaphy, Project Manager

Prior to high school, Nora did not initially intend to decide to pursue a career in a STEM field, but quickly discovered an abiding interest in molecular biology during her ninth grade biology course. By participating in the Real World Design Challenge, she has gained not only an understanding of critical engineering principles that will be useful in any subspecialty of STEM, but has also developed many other skills, including leadership, time management, and analytical design thinking. The Real World Design Challenge encouraged her to explore the career potential of a variety of engineering fields and gain a new understanding of the day-to-day work of professional engineers. In her role as project manager this year, she attempted to make the best possible use of the skills and resources that RWDC provides in order to be prepared for a demanding STEM curriculum in college.

Maximilian Fleischmann, Simulations Engineer

Maximilian’s experience with the challenge has inspired him to enter into the field of aerospace engineering. The knowledge and skills required to complete it have helped him connect the STEM topics he has learned to possible applications in his future career. The rigor of completing the challenge alongside senior year schoolwork has not only inspired him to seek out challenge wherever possible, but also helped prepare him to withstand the demanding academic burden of postsecondary engineering education. Even as a third time participant, he finds that each successive year helps build cooperative team skills that are critical to project-based work, and relevant to any career in STEM.

Irsal Tomasati, Systems and Test Engineer

Irsal has learned during the challenge project that engineering is often a team effort. The school's engineering program is effective in exposing students to new career options, but is rudimentary in the extent of the training that it can offer and merely initiates an interest in engineering. This challenge was Irsal’s first experience of professional grade engineering and the rigors of constructing an effective engineering design. It has shown him the importance of communication and teamwork, as well as respecting others ideologies.

Dana Joseph, Project Mathematician

Dana has an interest in medical science and plans to pursue biomedical engineering in college, as it combines her passions for medicine and engineering. By participating in the Real World Design Challenge, she has been able to apply skills from her engineering and advanced science and math courses to solve a real-world problem. She has been able to expand her knowledge of engineering applications in the environment and has also been able to better understand the problems and obstacles that professional engineers encounter. Her experience with RWDC last year served to strengthen her interest in engineering. In her role as project mathematician and scientist, she aimed to evaluate the various technical aspects of the project and apply concepts to ensure that the project addressed important mathematical constraints.

Danayit Mekonnen, Project Scientist

Danayit has a passion for astrophysics and aerospace engineering. Her interest in these fields motivated her to participate in the Real World Design Challenge. She hopes to acquire professional experience that she can use throughout her education and career. Her connections and experiences from previous projects have allowed her to excel in her role as a project scientist. Additionally, she has previously built and flown small drones in her engineering classes, and was able to bring this expertise to this year’s project. As a second year participant in RWDC, Danayit’s general knowledge of engineering has increased significantly, as has her ability to work closely and effectively with her team members.

Shreya Patel, Project Scientist and Mathematician

Shreya wants to pursue a career in engineering in the future. Attending a STEM high school and partaking in the engineering projects there has strengthen her choice of pursuing a career in an engineering field. Engineering is a place where Shreya is able to combine her love for science and math. Since she has not decided on a specific field, she is continuing to explore her options by participating in competitions and clubs related to STEM, including the Real World Design Challenge. Throughout this challenge, she has had a chance to refine her strengths and improve her areas of weakness. The process has taught her many things, not just knowledge, but also a greater understanding of the dynamics of the team. Her ability to work with a group of fellow classmates has increased the appeal of the design process and enabled her to obtain crucial skills for educational and professional environments.

Kenechi Nkwo, Communications Specialist

Kenechi’s participation in this project has broadened her perspectives on STEM by challenging her to take an idea generated through brainstorming and produce a real product using STEM techniques and skills. Working in this challenge has allowed her to gain greater insight into what it would be like to work within her chosen career path of civil engineering, where engineers must work with a team to solve issues facing humanity and the environment, such as increasing crop productivity or conserving water. As communication skills are of the utmost importance to the engineering field, where project collaboration occurs on a regular basis, Kenechi’s skills in communication and teamwork were improved by her facilitation of the communication aspect of the Real World Design Challenge team.

Impact on School Community

This year, the RWDC team has made considerable effort to integrate their challenge work with the STEM curriculum and extracurricular activities of ESUMS in order to have a lasting impact on the school community. The team used their RWDC project to fulfill the senior engineering capstone requirement and frequently presented their work to the Engineering Design and Development class, hopefully generating interest in the challenge and setting a precedent for future students to use RWDC as their capstone. The legacy team was also recruited from members of the Applied Engineering class, Digital Electronics class, and Robotics Team in order to give a larger number of students the opportunity to participate in RWDC, developing their STEM interests and learning new skills in the context of a real-world engineering problem. This team was trained by members of the current group to take over the RWDC program at ESUMS after the current members’ graduation.

Additionally, this year’s RWDC team benefited from significant support from the school community. The team applied for and received $230 of funding from the PTO, which was used to purchase drone parts to build a physical prototype of the design. They also earned $200 from a dress-down day fundraiser to purchase formal team outfits for the RWDC presentations. Finally, the team set up a GoFundMe and requested support from Sikorsky officials affiliated with the school in order to cover additional competition expenses. These Sikorsky engineers and many of the school administrators attended a practice presentation that the group gave as a rehearsal for the upcoming RWDC presentations, where they provided helpful feedback and suggestions for areas of improvement. The team’s community outreach and engagement was supported by the creation of a team website (http://rwdcesums.wixsite.com/rwdc) and Facebook page for publicity and support. These were frequently updated throughout the challenge and will be transferred to the legacy team after this year so that they can be used in subsequent years.