Why Build a Quadcopter?

"Because it's AWESOME! That's why." - Deanna Lim

Well that is a fairly common question. Luckily I had an amazing professor for my Intro to Electrical and Computer Engineering here at SLU who instead of standing up in front of us talking about engineering the whole time, he would bring in guest speakers from businesses around Saint Louis to talk to us. One of them was Marcos Chu. Mr. Chu's topic that day was brain storming and how it is used in the workplace. As a challenge for the class to think about was how to mount electric motors to some pieces of PVC tubing. He told us that this was to build a quadcopter that a group was working called the Broad Engagement Robitic Spiral Demo Team (or BERSDT because that is really a mouthful). This immediately sparked my interest because I love anything that flies. As a kid my mom would take my brothers and I to the airport to eat lunch and watch the airplanes come in. Not to mention that I've had a couple RC planes and a decent sized 4 channel remote control helicopter. I had heard that this team had worked with SLU in the years past to build robots and they let the students do it, so after the class I asked Mr. Chu about the possibility of SLU building one and I told him that I would love to be able to get in on it. My professor saw that I was interested, so he got me a budget to start testing. Eventually the plan is to create kits that we can distribute to high schools so that the kids can build them in teams, and then we could have a giant competition with quadcopters flying all over! 

 My hope with this project is to actually make a difference in high schools to give kids a chance to do something that they wouldn't get the chance to do otherwise. My high school didn't have any clubs (except for a book club I think), so I didn't get the chance to really explore what kind of engineering, or if I would even like engineering at all. The point of this project is to get kids interested in engineering while they're still in high school. Thankfully I can see that there are already a lot of kids interested, and by the time that I graduate we should be able to have the project set up to continue on annually