Remote Control Aerial Inspection Vehicle

Background: The current method for inspection of the wind turbines is to use a lift to place a technician up in the air and to manually and physically inspect the turbines for damage due to bird or lightning strikes. This is very costly and dangerous for both the technician and the wind turbines. Goal: For Mechanical Engineering a senior culminating project is required for graduation which involves creating or modifying a device to solve a problem. My team\u27s goal was to construct a device that would allow the technician to safely from the ground inspect the turbines. The device would be self contained and would not cause any additional damage to what it is inspecting. The device would be capable of carrying a camera that would either live transmit images to the operator or record the data for later viewing. Method of Construction: Our device was primarily constructed with the new three dimensional printers located in the new Hogue building. We designed these components in a 3D program called SolidWorks and then literally printed out our digital designs. The printed material is ABS plastic that the printers extrude in tenth of an inch string that melt together to form the shapes