The project in the next lab is a UAV (whatever that stands for. It's an autonomous model airplane). Pinocchio decided to call it the Dynamic Over Ground System (DOGS). Every time someone mentions the name, Skipper sputters, "But it doesn't mean anything! It's meaningless!"
They've had some problems getting it off the ground. All this semester, the weather has not been cooperative. On the days when they go to fly, it's raining, or too windy, or something. Last time, the weather was cooperative.
The instrumentation was not.
The GPS altimeter failed and the little airplane decided that it needed to descend. Immediately. Abruptly.
They had to dig it out of the ground. The battery, which sits at the back of the instrument compartment, had slid forward, down through the instrumentation, so the bits that hadn't failed are now bits of bits.
Word got around. Faculty members talk to each other, it seems. In the seminar class a few days later, the professor was going over the different requirements for the senior projects and mentioned how we should have our project ready to display for the open house. "But if your project has taken a dive, you'll have to think of something else. And if you're running into design problems, or you find that your design has crashed and burned…"
221 words | March 24, 2005 09:44 PM | Ivory towerThose guys shouldn't feel too bad. Armadillo airspace did the same thing (at least a couple of times), while trying to build a rocket for the X-prise (one which was supposed to carry _people_).
Maybe they should just rename their project: the Unmanned Autonomous Posthole Digger
Posted by: Woolstar at March 26, 2005 03:29 AMThey're just really disappointed. Last year's UAV team won a national contest—a few thousand dollars each. So they had the idea that they would do the same, but without a working plane they can't even enter.
Posted by: Nee-chama at March 26, 2005 11:06 PM