The Malott Innovation Awards are the culmination of ME463, Purdue's capstone class for seniors in Mechanical Engineering.  Teams of students work closely with faculty members and industry partners to create prototype products, continually refining and improving them using the knowledge from their engineering courses over the last four years. At the end of the semester, the students present their final prototypes to a panel of Purdue ME alumni who work in various industries; this panel selects the award winning teams.

The top teams from the Fall 2023 Malott Innovation Awards are:

1st place (tie): Eden Green, Sofía Delfini, John Dumbleton, Michael Goldberg, Praneel Jasinghe, Elena Krizman, Juan Pablo Olloqui. Eden Green Technology is an innovative agricultural startup focused on the vertical hydroponic industry with the goal of providing high quality, locally grown produce that is cost effective for the consumer. Currently, human-operated forklifts navigate the plant columns for harvesting, but this is dangerous, tedious, and inefficient. EVE is a cutting-edge autonomous robot capable of reliably locating, harvesting, and depositing plants into a collection bin, and is the perfect solution to this problem. The design combines a 3D computer vision system for precise plant location, a dynamic 2-axis positioning mechanism, a pneumatic cutting mechanism for clean stem cuts, and a gripping mechanism for handling both leaves and the transfer of harvested plants into the collection bin.  The robot has been designed for both speed and reliability with Eden Green’s unique greenhouses in mind for seamless integration. This innovation will transform Eden Green’s hydroponic practices, fostering a sustainable, automated future.

1st place (tie): Renail, Mohamad Aldawood, Teodoro Bagnoli, Malik Hagverdiyev, Alan Hopf, Sam Rosoff, Zach Little. The Nail Coil Rewinder is a machine designed to automatically unwind, untangle, and rewind nail coils, restoring functionality to construction materials that would otherwise be discarded. Tailored to the roofing industry, which relies on nail coils for installing shingles, this product addresses common coil damage issues caused by handling problems in construction environments. The Nail Coil Rewinder fixes these damaged coils, minimizing waste and saving money. Utilizing a custom roller and gear mechanism, the system straightens and aligns the nails before re-coiling the nails into a coil suitable for use in nail guns.

3rd place: Project Persephone, Solomon Blinchevsky, Ben Pulver, Sahej Sharma, Vin Silva, Rafe Sullivan. Payload fairings are used to protect launch vehicles and their payloads during flight. Once the vehicle reaches the target altitude, the fairing separates to allow for deployment of the payload. Failures in separation have cost NASA and other contractors millions of dollars in recent years. For this reason, Northrop Grumman tasked the Project Persephone team with creating a magnetic fairing separation system that is quick and reliable while minimizing shock and foreign-object debris. To accomplish this, the team utilized a passive electromagnetic system to repel the fairing halves. The halves are initially held together using a solenoid-pin mechanism. During the separation, a high-power direct current is run through several coils of wire to generate opposing magnetic fields and cause repulsion. This is a novel separation concept minimally explored by the industry, and it outperforms current systems by minimizing shock and debris production.

About the Malott Innovation Awards

The Malott Innovation Awards are supported by an endowment created in 2007 by Thomas J. Malott (BSME '62, HDR '02), to foster an innovation culture among Purdue Mechanical Engineering students.  Malott is the former president, CEO and director of Siemens Energy and Automation.  His career included executive positions with Parker-Hannifin and the Ransburg Corp., as well as serving on several corporate boards.  He was an inaugural member of the Purdue Foundation Development Council and was awarded the Outstanding Mechanical Engineer and Distinguished Engineering Alumnus awards in 1991 from the university.

Writer: Jared Pike, jaredpike@purdue.edu, 765-496-0374

Source: Greg Jensen, jensen23@purdue.edu, 765-496-0214