Capstone team builds solar panel cleaning drone
Winner of the Craig M. Berge Dean’s Award for Most Outstanding Project, Team 25511, presents a prototype for a portable microchip fabrication device designed to expose aspiring engineering students to semiconductor design.
Students in the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering were crucial to the success of several Interdisciplinary Capstone teams that competed in the Winter Craig M. Berge Design Day on Dec. 5. Twelve teams consisting of 78 students showed off the results of their yearlong engineering design projects.
One team’s project cleaned hard-to-reach solar panels with SPUD, the Solar Panel Unmanned Decontaminator.
Team 25509 built an autonomous drone that detects dirt and cleans panels with pressurized water. Sponsor Vijayan Chomatil plans to establish a mobile cleaning service with the project.
“Learning to build a drone from the ground up was incredible and even better knowing it won’t just sit on a shelf,” said Bridger Sanborn, aerospace engineering student and project procurement lead.
The team coded the system to scan roofs using LiDAR, identify solar panels and automatically navigate the area.
“It sprays away dirt and debris to restore the panel’s efficiency without customers having to climb onto their roof,” Sanborn said.