An important part of senior year for Purdue ECE students is senior design. Teams incorporate all of their previous coursework to take on a challenging engineering project. Students decide on a project and then design and test a system, component, or process to meet the goals they have set.

The Purdue University campus has been shut down since mid-March because of COVID-19, but that didn’t stop ECE students from completing their senior design projects. Team Sowin' Seeds included students Ethan Campbell, Jackie Malayter, Josh Panos, and Moiz Rasheed. They designed and built a pollinating bee drone that detects apple blossoms, flies up to them and touches them with an appendage, and flies away to another flower.

“Global pollinator populations are declining,” says team member Jackie Malayter. “So our team decided to build the pollinating bee drone to mitigate that problem.”

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the team decided to set up and work on their project in the basement of team member Ethan Campbell’s house. They brought in an oscilloscope, several soldering irons, and a lot of test equipment they normally wouldn’t have access to 24-hours a day.

"I have enjoyed working with my team in a unique situation,” says Campbell. “We are really learning how to make the best out of extraordinary circumstances.”

Team lead Moiz Rasheed jokes that working remotely has other benefits as well.

"I can finally drink soda next to an oscilloscope," he says.

Team Sowin’ Seeds says despite the challenges they are pleased with the project they were able to produce and they learned a lot and had fun while doing it.