A group of four senior Mechanical Engineering students, three of whom are women, recently took first place in the American Society of Mechanical Engineers District A Student Design Contest.  Team members were Krysten Dzwigalski, Christopher Fox, Jessica Gasior and Elizabeth Hardy.

ASE Student Design team members (l to r) Elizabeth Hardy, Jessica Gasior, Christopher Fox, and Krysten Dzwigalski. 

The competition, held at the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, NY, involved designing an autonomous window cleaner capable of cleaning a window without any human involvement.

"The requirements were very stringent and very few teams completed their project and participated," says Nassif E. Rayess, team advisor and associate professor of Mechanical Engineering. "The UDM entry took first place and qualified for the national competition."

The team worked under strict time and project-weight constraints. "Students started work in January so they had only three months to finish the work," explains Rayess. "Weight restrictions were very strict, which necessitated the use of exotic materials such as carbon fiber composites.  Everyone had to be extremely weight conscious as the total weight of the entire project had to be less than a kilogram. Every component was weighed and every gram was accounted for."

Team members plan to reconvene in late October to participate in the national competition, which is scheduled to take place in Boston.

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