STEM
Big Idea for Small Spaces
The RIVIR project actually started as this idea we had during J-Term.]
We wanted to design something that involved a drone or some other remote control vehicle.
Something that was gonna be a little move and decrease the need for a human in a tight space.
We were talking to the professors and they were like, do you think that this is something doable? You should talk to somebody who actually has done similar kind of stuff, and the best thing we could think of was the Facilities team.
And they said they had a big need for an improvement to their current method of valuing steam trap efficiency.
So it slowly got changed into this idea of having a rover that goes into these steam rooms at Middlebury, needed and would like us to go into and check for leaks. Which was a better use of the resource than to use it for termites.
We decided to really focus on creating an algorithm for infrared camera, protect it in a case that would make it water proof but also heat sensitive. And have a really low center of mass. And from there pretty much it’s pretty straight forward, just control it with an Xbox controller and the various buttons will turn on lights and the right trigger will take a screen shot thermally.
And once we take a thermal screen shot you’re able to kind of click on different points in the picture and that will give you a temperature in celsius of those different points. So you’re able to very, very precisely determine the data there.
I was really glad to see that kind of application of my learning knowledge to something that could actually be technical and seeing.
It’s like a very hands on way of learning Science and a more practical way of learning Science I would say.
When you overcome all these challenges and you finally see your end goal sitting right there, and working, it was fantastic.
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