Georgia Southern's Engineering Design Challenge (EDC), a program sponsored by NASA's Georgia Space Grant Consortium and Gulfstream Aerospace, ended last month. In its seventh year, the annual program took place over several weeks and offered area high school students the opportunity to learn from their STEM teachers, Georgia Southern engineering students, and practicing engineers who mentored the student teams through the planning of their project using fundamental mathematics, physics, and design engineering. The 2021 theme was Eagle-ROAR2 (Remotely Operated Aerial Recovery), and teams were required to design a 3D printed tool that could attach to a flying drone and simulate that excavation and delivering of lunar soil.

Five high school teams participated this year. Each was provided a stock drone, which they learned how to fly. They then worked on designing the drone attachment, which was 3D printed by Georgia Southern, before testing and troubleshooting it during drone flight. The final competition was based on which team's design worked best as well as their presentation of their design process and understanding of technical concepts.  The team from Jenkins High took the first runner-up position as well as the award for Best Presentation. 

You can watch all of the 2021 student teams' presentations by clicking here. To learn more about Georgia Southern's EDC program, visit their webpage here.