Drones designed by students with Boeing's AerosPACE program take flight
Purdue was one of seven universities to participate in Boeing’s 2019 Aerospace Partners for the Advancement of Collaborative Engineering (AerosPACE) program, a multi-university capstone project that requires teams to build, design and fly an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) for a specific mission.
Students from Purdue, Clemson, BYU, Washington, Tuskegee, Iowa State, and Georgia Tech flew their final aircraft April 12 near Charleston, S.C. The event was a culmination of an academic year working across the seven universities with manufacturing support from Everett Community College in Everett, Wash.
AAE had eight students divided between three teams with a variety of other colleges on each mission, and each team designed and built its own UAV.
The three Purdue teams represented had missions of post-hurricane search and rescue, air quality sampling, and tornado-chasing dropsonde deployment.
It was the sixth consecutive year AAE students have been involved with the program.
“Being involved with the AerosPACE program for Purdue means a lot,” says Phil Baldwin, a design, build, test engineer who works with AAE Professor John Sullivan on the AAE451 aircraft senior design course. “Getting experience with students from other locations or folks from other companies or other locations from the same company, just getting the experience that we provide here is something big. Purdue loves it from that aspect.”
