PROFESSOR: In order to anchor the class,
and provide an application that is at the same time
realistic, but not overly complex,
we chose to participate in the 2016 CANSAT competition.
And CANSAT is just what the name stands for.
It's the design of a satellite, that
fits into a can, that is launched,
not into space, but at relatively
high altitude with a sounding rocket, essentially.
And so the CANSAT competition has
been run for about 20 years.
It's quite well known, and there's
teams from all across the world that participate.
There is now a CANSAT competition in the US.
There's also a European version of it.
The goal of the CANSAT competition,
is for students to go step by step
through the design process.
The starting point for the students,
is a set of requirements, 47 requirements that
are given by the organizers, about what
the particular system has to do.
For example, the CANSAT has to fit within the payload fairing
of the rocket.
It has to survive the launch.
So a certain number of g loads and vibrations
have to be survivable by the payload.
The payload then has to separate into both the glider
portion, and the actual container that
contains the payload.
On its way down, the payload has to fly in a circular pattern,
for about two minutes.
And during the descent, it has to record temperature
and pressure of the atmosphere.
And you get extra bonus points if you
record images, and transmit those images to the ground.
The students who are responsible for everything
except the rocket itself.
So the design of the glider, the container, the ground station,
and all the procedures.
So what's interesting about systems engineering and design,
is that there are different approaches,
how to tackle the problem.
One is an approach where you take it step by step,
and you try to basically get the right answer at every step.
But, at some point you need to check yourself, as well,
with milestones.
The other approach, and that's typically
what we call a waterfall, or stage gate process, which
is what's applied in very large systems, where it's
too expensive to do a lot of prototypes,
and you have to get it right the first time.
The other approach is spiral development, or agile,
or rapid development, where you do quick prototypes,
and you learn very quickly, and iterate your design.
And in some sense, what we're doing in this class,
is a combination of the two.
What was very rewarding, is to see
how students ideated their concepts, always
keeping in mind the requirements,
and the end goal in mind.
But, also testing those ideas, either through modeling
and simulation, or with very simple prototypes that
can be made out of paper.
One team actually produced a 3D printed version,
of their glider, even though that wasn't
officially necessary before the key milestone, which
is the PDR.
And so it was interesting to see,
how every team approached it slightly differently.