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Academy InvenTeam Completes Yearlong Project
Last fall students at the Middlesex County Academy for Science, Mathematics and Engineering Technologies in Edison who are developing a drone for agricultural use received a boost from an MIT program that seeks to challenge youngsters to invent solutions to contemporary problems.
A grant of up to $10,000 had been awarded to the Edison Academy team that is working on an unmanned crop-spraying drone that would be affordable for use on small farms. It was one of 15 such grants to U.S. high schools announced in October 2013 as part of the Lemelson-MIT InvenTeam Program.
Academy teacher Enzo Paterno served as advisor to the school's first ever InvenTeam. He described the students’ invention as an autonomous unmanned aerial vehicle that will “efficiently and accurately” spray crops on small farms. The drone would be about 5 feet across with 16-inch rotors and will use a combination of GPS and computerized visual tracking with a camera.
Paterno, who teaches electrical and computer engineering, began the InvenTeam application process during spring 2013 and attended training at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to help prepare the final proposal. A panel of judges composed of educators, researchers, staff and alumni of MIT, as well as representatives of the industry and former Lemelson-MIT award winners, chose the winners.
The Edison Academy team also enlisted a number of collaborators to mentor the students, including Dr. John Grande, director of the Rutgers Snyder Research and Extension Farm, who specializes in pesticides; Xerxes Vania, an expert on drones for General Atomics Aeronautical Systems who has worked on the Predator military drone; Edison Academy parent James Carr, who coaches the SayWatt robotics team; Dr. Senthil Kumar, an expert on computer vision for Bell Labs; Tom Reed, an aerial crop-spraying expert for Teejet Technologies; Dr. Nenad Bozinovic, an optical engineer for Nistica Inc.; Tony Grace, senior director of engineering for Nistica; Dr. Sunil K. Gupta, senior manager of new product development for IEEE, the father of a team member, and Thomas McNellis, senior Manager at Lockheed Martin, a member of an Edison Academy advisory board.
The Academy InvenTeam presented their final product at MIT in June 2014. They overcame countless obstacles in making their invention HASMAAD (High Accuracy Spraying Multirotor Autonomous Agricultural Drone) into a reality. They achieved stable drone flight in both autonomous and joystick controlled modes. They implemented a user interface software, Mission Planner, that is integrated with the drone and reports statistics it gathers during flight. Both the pesticide spraying mechanism and the image processing have completed unit testing and were ready to integrate with the drone itself. Alongside final integration, the team is also in the process of attaining a provisional patent.
The Academy InvenTeam is comprised of Class of 2014 graduates Varun Gupta, Greg Goldshteyn, Maulik Doshi, Kipsy Quevada, Inderdeep Grewal, and Shrey Mendiratta, rising seniors Meenal Kumar, Hrishi Dharam, Hima Tammineedi, Raziq Mohideen, Shreya Shirodkar, and Prathm Juneja along with rising junior Neha Shah.
For more information, see the team's blog.