Integrated multidisciplinary capstone projects of an underwater robot and a quadcopter for building structural analysis

Abstract

Research and teaching are two crucial aspects of faculty responsibilities for some Engineering Technology and Multidisciplinary Engineering Programs. It would be worth discussing how faculty can manage a research project and engage with students through capstone projects. As a case study, a building structural analysis project is presented in this paper. This building structural analysis project can be broken down to several components. One of the subcomponents is a quadcopter platform, and the other one is an underwater robot platform for a building analysis. These two components were managed as two capstone projects. Two capstone projects were carried out as a part of this building structural analysis research project at Texas A&M University. The first capstone team designed and built a custom quadcopter that could fly close to the building to find potential damage to the building. The second capstone team designed and built an underwater robot to inspect the portion of a building structures that are submerged such as bridges. For this multidisciplinary project, three faculty members from two departments of Engineering Technology and Construction Science formed a team and advised the students.