At Dartmouth, ENGS 76 (Machine Engineering) is a class that provides hands on experience with mechanical design and analysis through a semester long project to design a machine to complete a challenge. When I took the class, the challenge was to create a machine that could assemble a bridge to span a 12 inch “canyon.” The bridge had to be constructed from a fixed set of materials, including plastic or foam blocks for support pylons and aluminum plates for the deck.

I developed a path planning algorithm for autonomous sailboats that prevents collisions with obstacles under shifting wind conditions as my computer science honors thesis.

For my capstone engineering project at Dartmouth (ENGS 89/90), I worked with a team of five other students to develop a model rocket that could perform vertical take off and landing (VTVL), inspired by the rockets developed by SpaceX and Blue Origin. This project was completed in partnership with STEM Robotix, a local company, with the intent of developing an educational product.

At the time of this project, there had never been a successful controlled vertical landing of a model rocket, let alone one developed as a product. Joe Barnard is trying to build a VTVL model rocket as part of a larger effort to build thrust vectored model rockets, and documenting his progress on YouTube.