{"id":76079,"date":"2021-03-29T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-03-29T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/hands-on-engineering-continues-at-uri-during-pandemic\/"},"modified":"2021-03-29T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2021-03-29T00:00:00","slug":"hands-on-engineering-continues-at-uri-during-pandemic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2021\/03\/hands-on-engineering-continues-at-uri-during-pandemic\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Hands-on\u2019 engineering continues at 溏心vlog免费B站 during pandemic"},"content":{"rendered":"

KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 March 29, 2021 \u2013 Seniors at the 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s College of Engineering are required to do hands-on, collaborative projects that address a real-world challenge.<\/p>\n

Students in the senior capstone design program are assigned projects by companies that typically involve creating a new product, improving an existing product or developing a process for doing something in a new way.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe senior capstone program is the crescendo for our engineering students,\u201d said Dean Raymond Wright. \u201cThese projects are where the students use all of the skills that they\u2019ve learned to develop a hands-on solution for one of the companies we work with.<\/p>\n

\u201cSocial distancing and the pandemic have created a unique challenge for our capstone students,\u201d said Wright. \u201cNormally, you could find these students around a table, making calculations, building prototypes, and interacting with faculty and with members of industry. Obviously, this can\u2019t happen now, so we have had to find new ways to interact.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ELECOMP<\/a>
Computer engineering student Daniel Mark Jr. (left) receives guidance on his advanced modular battery system project from Daniel Wertz, a technical advisor from EaglePicher Technologies.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Collaborating with Technology<\/strong><\/p>\n

Inside the new Fascitelli Center for Advanced Engineering, Heather Rojas, Nicholas Diluiso and Jake St. Germain have been working on a miniature drone project<\/a> in 溏心vlog免费B站’s Intelligent Control & Robotics Lab. Rojas is majoring in computer engineering. Diluiso and St. Germain are studying electrical engineering.<\/p>\n

The students have worked as a team, meeting weekly with Assistant Professor Paolo Stegagno, who heads up the robotics lab. Most of the communication has occurred virtually.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe pandemic has affected our interactions, since it is harder to articulate some of the issues we\u2019ve had virtually than it would be to simply show Professor Stegagno in person,\u201d said Rojas, who is from Warwick<\/strong>. \u201cThis has forced us to really understand the material better and learn the correct terminology.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Ocean<\/a>
Garrett Connelly (left) and Rebecca Reed lower the first version of a bubble screen into a tank of water, as Christian Mofit (right) records it with an underwater camera.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As far as access to the robotics lab and the drones, that too has been a challenge. In the beginning\u00a0stages of the project, they worked remotely. Then they were allowed to work in person, following masking and social distancing requirements. Then they weren\u2019t permitted into the lab during the statewide pause\u00a0in Rhode Island. Now, the students are back in the lab, following the COVID-19 protocols.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe constant change has been difficult and has forced us to change the specifications of our project,\u201d said Rojas. \u201cOne of the hardest challenges has been potential COVID exposure and quarantines. Our team was forced to quarantine for two weeks straight at one point and we\u2019ve had to quarantine on several other occasions. When we can’t have our entire group together, it causes delays and missed deadlines.\u201d<\/p>\n

Backup Plans<\/strong><\/p>\n

Jesse Cobb and his capstone design teammates in ocean engineering have been working with an Ecosystem Passive Acoustic Monitoring (Eco-PAM) system to gain a better understanding of why marine mammals react to certain things the way they do.<\/p>\n

\u201cCOVID has made it very hard to accomplish work on the project,\u201d said Cobb, who is from Chicago<\/strong>. \u201cWe don\u2019t get to meet in person as a research team and the resources available to us have become limited. It\u2019s harder to find information through online conversation compared to face-to-face interaction.\u201d<\/p>\n

The most important stage of the project, a field test of the system off the coast of Martha\u2019s Vineyard, was canceled due to COVID restrictions, causing the team to adapt.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince COVID prevented us from obtaining our own data to process, we\u2019ve been using data from pile drivings from the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind Farm to practice different direction of arrival algorithm methods,\u201d said Cobb\u2019s teammate, Ari Sawyer, from Newburyport, Massachusetts<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Unexpected Benefit<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cAs industry has moved away from in-person meetings and personal interaction during the pandemic, our students too have learned to use technology to build remote, virtual teams,\u201d said Wright. \u201cAs an unexpected result, working on engineering challenges remotely is actually adding to the capstone experience. Virtual collaboration is allowing engineering to happen with team members all over the globe, and we think this method will remain long after the pandemic ends.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 March 29, 2021 \u2013 Seniors at the 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s College of Engineering are required to do hands-on, collaborative projects that address a real-world challenge. Students in the senior capstone design program are assigned projects by companies that typically involve creating a new product, improving an existing product or developing a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":76082,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[25],"class_list":["post-76079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives","tag-college-of-engineering"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76079"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76079\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}