UND students win competition with unmanned aircraft

GRAND FORKS — University of North Dakota faculty member Dustin McNally said he knew when his team of engineering students was testing their massive unmanned aerial system project even though his office was on another floor. The “decacopter” buzzed so loudly that it often drew the attention of other students from throughout the engineering department.

“A lot of the freshmen and sophomores coming in would see how much success we were having and it kind of pushed them to do better in their design classes,” team member and UND student Daniel Smith said.

Their hard work building the contraption, almost entirely from scratch, paid off as the team won the world championship at the American Society of Mechanical Engineers Student Design Competition finals in Montreal in November.

Besting 17 other teams from around the world, the five-person group won for being able to successfully navigate a course with the UAS, but McNally said they scored a lot of points for being able to lift 78 pounds with the device.

“It’s about making it strong enough, sturdy enough, and giving it enough power,” he said.

The winning UAS consists of several rotating blades to make it fly and is powered by five specialized batteries. About $1,000 worth of materials were put into the project.

The device can only stay airborne for about two minutes, and Alex Heyd, one of the student team members, said at one point they lifted more than 100 pounds with it.

Practical applications for the UAS include carrying water to forest fires, which was the basis of the ASME competition.

But for now, the UAS sits dormant in UND’s Upson I building.