It's almost the end of the school year! And that means I'm almost a senior... strange how quickly all of college has gone. Life is definitely fast. Anyhow I only have one more 6 page paper to write and I'll be done for the year. Praise God for that. I'll be returning home this Saturday May 21 to Southern California for the summer! Yay for home! I can't wait. At least Boston is warm now. The major thing I see better on the east coast is the cleaner air and bright colors. In SoCal all the colors are quite dull comparatively but it's definitely sunnier. That is something I miss because sun makes me happy.
Anyhow, I will be working at Boeing this summer on autonomous underwater vehicles and hydrogen fuel cells. The job sounds interesting and hopefully is something I want to do in the future. It seems like the engineers at the company aren't stuck at a desk in front of a computer. They all go out into the field and test their creations hands on. Autonomous sytems and power systems have interested me also so hopefully this kind of job will be a good fit. Also, the job is 15 minutes from my house in Anaheim which is awesome. Getting such an optimal job is a God blessing.
For those of you in Maryland, I'll be coming between the dates of June 29 and July 4 so I hope we can meet up. I'll be busy for a good portion of the time but we can probably fit something into our schedules. And why will I be in Maryland? Well, it's the 3rd annual AUVSI Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Competition. I've been working on an autonomous aircraft since the end of last semester and the national competition is in Maryland. Our current aircraft has an wingspan greater than 8 feet, can fly for close to two hours continuously and has an operating range of about 150 miles. I must say that I've learned a lot this semester working on it since I've had to work with a lot of electronic and mechanical equipment. That plus I'm the pilot for the craft so I've learned to not be nervous flying a $20,000 aircraft. I'm guessing that price could increase shortly once we add the gyro stabilized camera pan/tilt mechanism. This aircraft will be capable of taking off on its own, flying to GPS coordinates while avoiding no fly zones, scanning the ground with wireless video and identifying vehicles with their GPS coordinates and orientation. It will also land on its own once it is tweaked. So I guess being the pilot won't be too bad once the airplane can do all of this by computer control but I'll be ready if the onboard computer ever messes up. So what is required to make this plane do all this? 3 axis gyros and accelerometers, differential GPS, Sonar for close ground proximity altitude, pitot tube and pressure sensors for altitude and airspeed, radio modems for ground station communication, and of course the flight computer. But I'll stop at that point since getting into this technical stuff would bore anyone reading this. I'll just end this idea with pictures of the plane in flight.
So... what else am I doing this summer? Well, God blessed me again and allowed to to do well at MIT's 2.007 competition where mechanical engineering students spend the semester building contraptions to accomplish a designated task. The top 5 students go on to compete at the International Design Competition in Aichi, Japan all expenses paid. I'm glad to say that I get to go! I can't wait! At that competition, I'll get to team up with students from other countries to compete at a final competition. I saw a couple countries going. France, Germany, United Kingdom, Brazil to name a few. I'm just wondering how I'm going to communicate with my partners... It lasts from August 2 -17 with the final competition at the World Exposition. Sounds like a great experience. I really want to thank God for this opportunity.
I think that pretty much sums up my thoughts and summer at the moment. I should go off and study for my amateur radio exam this Wed. I need to get this license from the FCC so I can legally operate the wireless video equipment on my UAV since the transmitter power is so great. Oh and of course... that paper... | 
