Wright St Univ Participation in AFRL University Engineering Design Challenge

The United States Air Force has a need to ascend objects in a silent and stealthy manner, without the use of a grappling hook or similar device. To that end they issued a design challenge to a group of universities to have teams of engineering students design and manufacture an alternative design to existing methods. With this goal in mind they outline several objectives; first the design must be able to ascend ninety feet. Second, the design must be inaudible at two hundred feet. Finally, the design must be safe. With these goals (i.e. design obstacles) in mind the design team at Wright State University has come up with two distinct designs. The first design essentially uses a remote control car to climb the wall. The vehicle is held to the wall using a combination of sticky tread (tank tracks) and pressure differentials, i.e. a vacuum. The second method is a buildable pole, which is comprised of three and half foot sections that collapse to twenty-four inches in length. This project is important to the United States Air Force because it will provide extra mobility to units that are in urban environments, as well as rough terrain. This is because the solution will provide a method to overcome the obstacles that exist in these environments. In urban environments the main obstacles will be buildings and in rural settings the main obstacles will be cliffs. The progress of the team has been marked by the completion of the pole, which completed a successful test run at the end of February. The fifth prototype of the robot successfully climbed the wall using a tanktread mode of movement, while the most recent branch of the vehicle utilizing four-wheels also successfully ascended a testing wall. All three designs will be presented at the competition in order to ensure that an optimum score is achieved.
The original document contains color images.