Jacobs School engineering demos at the first San Diego Maker Faire

Engineers for Exploration will demo some of their tech at the first-ever San Diego Maker Faire this weekend.

Jacobs School engineers are out in force at this weekend's first-ever San Diego Maker Faire. The event, which takes place Oct. 3 and 4 in Balboa Park will bring together tinkerers, techies, hobbyists of all stripes, educators, artists, crafters--and more.

The event is organized by the City of San Diego, The Balboa Park Cultural Partnership, the San Diego Makers Guild and Tijuana Innovadora.

UC San Diego contributions to the event include:

-  UCSD Robotics will demo the MiP balancing robot at the Robotics Zone
- Engineers for Exploration will demo an automated camera trap, high-tech birds' nest finders and LiDAR scanning, also at the Robotics Zone
- The Qualcomm Institute's high-tech OptIPortable display walls will visualize a mock dig site at the Family Zone
- QI researchers will display several drones at the Drone Zone.

In addition, Jacobs School professors Thomas Bewley (robotics), Steve Swanson (comptuer science) and Falko Kuester (structural engineering) plan to give talks during the event, along with research scientist Curt Schurgers and Ph.D. student James Strawson.

The Global TIES program will be taking over the Jacobs School Instagram feed during the event (@UCSanDiegoengineering).

More about UC San Diego events at the Maker Faire here.

More Maker Faire info at http://sdmakerfaire.org/

Other Jacobs School-affiliated exhibitors include:

. IEEE UCSD

 SEDS@UCSD

 The Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers at UCSD

 Divergent Engineering of UCSD

Triton 3D

 Triton Rocket Club

UC San Diego Autonomous Airplane Team

Global TIES 

The future of drones: Jacobs School alums weigh in

When Radley Angelo, class of 2015, spent weekends building and flying RC planes and helicopters with his dad and brothers, he never thought he was already building a foundation for his professional life. Angelo went on to become the CEO of Spark Aerial, a systems integration company that focuses on aerial robotics--meaning drones.

His path from freshman at the Jacobs School to CEO is documented in the latest issue of Triton Magazine, the university's alumni publication, in a story titled "Life Among the Drones."

During his time at UC San Diego, Angelo joined Engineers for Exploration, an organization designed to bring cutting-edge technology to the fields of archaeology and exploration. E4E, as it is also known, is led by Jacobs School alum Albert Lin and computer science professor Ryan Kastner. Members investigate digs anywhere from Lake Tahoe, to the jungles of Guatemala, to Mongolia.

Lin needed someone to drive the $20,000 drones he was using to try and find the tomb of Genghis Khan.  He recalls is the Triton story:

We were in a very remote location and had really great access to satellite imagery, but I wanted to be able to get a bird’s-eye view in areas that were more tree covered,” says Lin. “I found Radley, who was really into remote control helicopters, and took him with me.”

 The story also includes a section about the effort of Jacobs School alumnus Jay Guan to improve FAA regulations for drones. He says:

“On the surface, it seems like the FAA is a little squeamish about this,” says Guan. “But from what I’ve seen, the FAA doesn’t have anything against drones or commercial drones. It’s just that safety has always been an overriding concern, and right now there is no good way to ensure that drone operations won’t compromise that.”

Ghenkis Khan's tomb in Mongolia,bats in Guatemala: Professor, alum discuss engineering in exploration

Ryan Kastner, a professor of computer science here at the Jacobs School, and Albert Lin, a Jacobs School alum and Qualcomm Institute research scientist, have some interesting items on their resumes, including exploring Mayan ruins in Guatemala while dodging bats, and horseback riding in the Mongolian plains to find the tomb of Ghenkis Khan. The two engineers were there to bring the latest technologies to archeological exploration sites.
In this episode of Computing Primetime, they recall some of their adventures, and the technologies behind them.
"We're at the beginning of an era of data driven exploration," Lin says.

Structural engineers use drones to investigate damage from Napa Valley earthquake

After the 6.0 Napa Valley earthquake struck in the early morning on Aug. 24, structural engineering professor Falko Kuester took a team of his students, and their drones, to investigate the damage. NBC Bay Area profiled their work in this video.

Said Kuester: 

 "As tragic as this seismic event this earthquake was, it is also a very powerful learning tool which allows us to study how buildings have responded to the ground shaking -- how they've been damaged."

Full story here. 

Don't drink and drone: Jacobs School alumns launch Kickstarter to create drone pilot flight school

"Don't drink and drone!" That's the advice in this fun video produced by SparkAerial, a start-up co-founded by Jacobs School computer science alums Radley Angelo, Kurt Selander and Austin Hill. The company bills itself as a full-service UAV shop and offers for example custom-built quadcopters and other flying UAVs and aerial cinematography services.

The team got their start in the Engineers for Exploration program here at the Jacobs School. Their got to accompany researcher Albert Lin on his expedition to find Genghis Khan's tomb in Mongolia. Since then, their work has been featured on CNN, Good Morning America and the National Geographic Channel, among many others.

They have recently launched a Kickstarter to create a drone pilot school. So far, with 26 days to go, backers have pledged $3,115 of a $5,000 goal. The money would go to creating an aerial cinematography video training series and an online resource center for aspiring drone pilots.
According to their Kickstarter page:

Our goal here is simple; we want to teach the world how to have fun, fly safe, and capture amazing content. The series covers everything from the basics, like choosing a copter and taking off for the first time, to more advanced piloting maneuvers that will make your video the talk of the town.

Watch: autonomous drone programmed by Jacobs School students avoids obstacles

NEW VIDEO!



A team of students in the Jacobs School's Embedded System Design Project class (CSE 145) programmed an autonomous drone to avoid obstacles. This is their first test flight.

CSE 145 is teaching students to build an embedded computing system. They learn the fundamentals of  microcontrollers, sensors and actuators. Students are also introduced to end-to-end system building and the hardware and software tools they will need to build a project in a team environment.

Video courtesy of computer science student David Dantas, who is also an IDEA Scholar. He worked on the project with team mates Miles Minton and Abe Hart (their adviser is CSE Prof. Ryan Kastner).

Video of an earlier demo:




From the course description: 

We are seeing substantial integration of computing systems into common objects. Such embedded systems silently control countless aspects of our life including our cars, phones, appliances, etc. And as computing hardware becomes cheaper and more powerful, we are capable of integrating it’s sophisticated intelligence everywhere. This is having an enormous societal impact, enabling advances in communications, medicine, and transportation, among many other things.  Yet, computer science courses are largely focused on traditional desktop computing despite the fact that over 99% of the microprocessors sold are used for embedded computing. Evidence for the success of this project class is extremely positive. Students are tremendously self-motivated when they are allowed to develop a project of their choosing.