Westlake Students Dominate Drone Contest

WESTLAKE, OH - Westlake High School students recently took part in a UAV (or drone) Design Contest. The contest was held in Avon Lake and was sponsored by Rapid Prototype and Manufacturing.

Designed to teach students about drone operation, design, and cutting edge technology in the manufacturing industry, the contest challenged student to build their own drones. To do so, students were asked to research, reverse engineer, and re-design the landing gear and blade gears of an existing Quad-Copter Drone.

Students then 3D printed their designs for testing and evaluation. Finally, students were asked to create an aerial pathway for their drones using a smartphone. Drones were then meant to take flight autonomously in a pattern that was drawn on the phone.

The students' creations were judged based on cost effectiveness, ease of use, functionality, creativity, and degree of difficulty of the aerial flight path. Students were also asked to create drawings and rendering using a computer-aided-design (CAD) model.

Prizes for the students included a drone for the winner and gift cards for second and third place.

The first place team was made up of:

• Sophomore Katie Willi
• Sophomore Connor Harte
• Sophomore Patrick Gheen
• Senior Sneha Ramahandran

The second place team was:

• Senior Mark Sargent
• Sophomore Connor Reis
• Junior Michael Rees

The third place team was:

• Senior David Eppele
• Sophomore Ethan Simon
• Sophomore Robert Fulop
• Sophomore Austin Loosli

Students presented their designs to a panel of professionals. Judges on the panel included Steve Speaker, industrial design engineer; Kyle Myer, research and development engineer; contest organizer Dana Hartup, project manager; and Tracy Albers, CTO and president.

Photo from Westlake Schools