NVCC Team Wins NASA CT Space Grant Consortium’s Quadcopter Challenge

WATERBURY - Naugatuck Valley Community College (NVCC)’s STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, & Mathematics) Club Team won the NASA CT Space Grant Consortium’s 2022 Community Quadcopter Challenge (CCQC) on Friday, April 29. Hosted by Central Connecticut State University at their Applied Innovation Hub, the CCQC featured teams from Norwalk, Naugatuck Valley, Northwestern CT, Quinebaug Valley, and Tunxis Community Colleges. In addition to winning the best overall award, NVCC’s team also won individual awards for best poster presentation and best photograph.

Rob Sheftel, Director of the college’s Academic Center for Excellence (ACE) served as the team lead and mentor and praised his team’s hard work and dedication. “I am thrilled for NVCC’s NASA quadcopter team. They worked nonstop for four months preparing for this day. They truly earned this success. I am proud of them and proud of our college’s passionate support for the team. Having the flexibility within the ACE to champion innovative projects like this and mentor these students is humbling.”

NVCC’s team comprised four STEM Club members, Jonathan Escobar, Albert Lagerman, Anthony Lane, and James Petkin. The team worked together to design their quadcopter not only to fly, but also to complete assigned tasks for competition. They learned to code in Python and wired their drone with two raspberry Pis.

“Some days it flew, some days it all fell apart, but we are here to learn and that is all that mattered,” said Escobar, the team hacker and coder, who is a computer science major at NVCC.

Named, “Endurance,” NVCC’s quadcopter rose to the challenge, and completed several of the assigned tasks including take-off, landing in a designated square, and taking a photograph of an object inside the course.

“Learning OnShape, the 3D printing and design software, to create our own guards and camera mount was a challenge but after hours of work we were ultimately successful,” shared Lagerman, the team’s 3D designer and drone handler, and Petkin, the team captain. Lagerman is an electrical engineering major at NVCC and Petkin is a computer science major.

Lane, the team drone tester and an electrical engineering major, noted that the CCQC was “such a cool experience! We were able to show off what we made to others and proved that anyone can do anything if they try.”

NASA Connecticut Space Grant Consortium (CTSGC) is a federally mandated grant, internship, and scholarship program that is funded as a part of NASA Education. The purpose of the Connecticut Space Grant Consortium is to inspire the pursuit of careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), especially within groups who have traditionally been underrepresented within the STEM disciplines, be the model for STEM-based professional development, contribute to the development of Connecticut’s economy and STEM pipeline, and provide an environment in which all stakeholders understand and contribute to the Consortium’s mission.