Community Engineering Projects
The tail end of the NSBE mission is, “to positively impact the community.” So often we relegate that to items such as tutoring, walk-a-thons, canned food drives and the like. Those things are important, and we even have some of those on our calendar for Fall 2003, but those only scratch the surface of what we can do. It is the vision of NSBE-HSC to define a new level of community service that will allow us to apply the maximum of our engineering talents to the purpose of improving the quality of life in the community. In the same spirit that NASA seeks to explore space “as only NASA can,” we are going to better the community “as only NSBE can.” These are but a few possible ideas we may bring to reality within the next few years.
· Intent is to increase solar power usage in the community, concentrating in economically disadvantaged groups who can use solar power to lower energy bills
· Partial Power Options
o Solar powered air conditioner (day)/battery powered fan (night) in bedrooms of elderly homes with no central air
· Full Power Options
o 100% solar power/secondary energy storage system for community center
· Design computer keyboard and monitor for use by bedridden patients (pregnant mothers, etc.)
o Should be usuable from fully reclined position - assume patient cannot move his/her back at all
o May also have some application to flight control systems for landing craft piloted by astronauts who have been subjected to extended periods of weightlessness
· Develop usable robot assistants for homes
o Autonomous/teleoperated lawn mower
o Appliance control networks
o Where possible, apply tech transfer from NASA work to terrestrial residential environment
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