Students Attend Regional ASME Conference
By Aaron Hover

The NC State section of ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers) recently attended the Student Professional Development Conference (SPDC) in Sweet Briar, VA. The conference provided a means to train officers, permitted networking opportunities, and served as a venue for a number of regional student competitions, including the Student Design Competition, Old Guard Oral Presentations, Old Guard Technical Poster Competition, Student Section Competition, and Technical Web Page Competition.

The Student Design Competition revolved around the following prompt: “Many homeowners, particularly those with mobility problems that keep them confined to a wheelchair, often have difficulty cleaning windows in their home. Being able to clean the outside of the window automatically should provide a safety benefit to all homemakers, particularly those with older upper floor windows to clean. The 2008 competition challenges student teams to design, build, and demonstrate a robot that will wash a residential double-hung sash window autonomously, that is, without human intervention beyond placing the robot on the lowest window pane and turning it on, or under remote control of an operator inside the building.” The team from NC State placed 2 nd out of four teams. The team members were Phillip Barrow, Luke Petree, Arie Van Eyk, Daniel Khodaparast, Libby Shulte, Margo Sauter, and Chris Tile.

Two students competed in the oral presentations. Stephen Owen received 1 st place in the technical category and 5 th overall for his presentation “Design of Shape Memory Alloy Controlled Robotic Catheter.” Korey Hite placed 4 th overall in the competition for his presentation “Mobile Ground-Based Radar Antenna Array Design.”

Chelsea Roberts and Aaron Hover participated in the Technical Poster event. The NC State section also placed 3 rd in the Student Section Competition, formally known as the Ingersoll-Rand Competition, based on the number of points the section is able to earn in the previous year, through meetings, activities and other categories. Special thanks go to Dr. Jeff Eischen, faculty advisor to the NC State ASME section.

NCSU ASME Student Section gathered before dinner and the keynote speaker.

The NCSU WinRobo Design Team