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Satellites, Uavs, And Ground Based Wireless Sensor Networks: Lessons Learned From An Reu Site In Environmental Sensor Development

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Conference

2006 Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Chicago, Illinois

Publication Date

June 18, 2006

Start Date

June 18, 2006

End Date

June 21, 2006

ISSN

2153-5965

Conference Session

Design Projects

Tagged Division

Design in Engineering Education

Page Count

32

Page Numbers

11.1103.1 - 11.1103.32

DOI

10.18260/1-2--292

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/292

Download Count

324

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Paper Authors

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Richard Schultz University of North Dakota

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Dr. Richard R. Schultz is associate professor and interim chair of electrical engineering at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks. He received the B.S.E.E. degree from UND in 1990, and the M.S.E.E. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Notre Dame in 1992 and 1995, respectively. Dr. Schultz joined the UND faculty in 1995, and his teaching and research interests are in signal and image processing, embedded systems, technology entrepreneurship, and systems engineering.

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William Semke University of North Dakota

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Dr. William Semke is an assistant professor in Mechanical Engineering at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks. He received a B.S. in Physics from Bemidji State University in 1991, an M.S. in Engineering Mechanics and Astronautics in 1993, and a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering in 1999 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dr. Semke joined the UND faculty in 2000, where he conducts research in precision motion and vibration control, smart structures, and space hardware design, along with instruction in the areas of mechanical design and experimental methods.

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Douglas Olsen University of North Dakota

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Doug Olsen is a Project Manager for the Center for People and the Environment at UND, where he has led the student and faculty development
efforts for AgCam, an imaging system to be used onboard the International Space Station, and for AEROCam, an airborne multi-spectral imaging system. He also holds adjunct faculty appointments in the Electrical Engineering and Space Studies departments. Prior to joining
UND he had several engineering and management positions in the aerospace industry. Mr. Olsen has a B.S.E.E. degree from North Dakota State
University (1981) and an M.S. degree in Space Studies from UND (1989).

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Arnold Johnson University of North Dakota

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Prof. Arnold F. Johnson is an assistant professor emeritus of electrical engineering at the University of North Dakota. Prof. Johnson has been an electrical engineering faculty member at the University of North Dakota since 1988, and he served as the department chairperson from 1999 through 2005. Prof. Johnson earned his B.S.E.E. at UND in 1959 and his M.S.E.E. at Iowa State University in 1962. His teaching experience varies from numerous MBA courses to a variety of engineering courses including circuits, electronics, robotics, image processing, and senior design.

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Ofer Beeri University of North Dakota

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Ofer Beeri graduated from the University of Haifa, ISRAEL, in 2002, and he has conducted research at the University of North Dakota ever since. Dr. Beeri's focus is on the application of remote sensing in agriculture, rangeland, and wetlands. He uses evapo-transpiration estimations from satellite images to predict sugar beet yield and quality, develops remote sensing algorithms to assess rangeland productivity, and writes Geographical Information Systems (GIS) models to map water dynamics in the Missouri Cateau wetlands.

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George Seielstad University of North Dakota

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Abstract
NOTE: The first page of text has been automatically extracted and included below in lieu of an abstract

Satellites, UAVs, and Ground-Based Wireless Sensor Networks: Lessons Learned from an REU Site in Environmental Sensor Development

Abstract

One of the one of the key goals of the National Science Foundation Research Experiences for Undergraduates program is to promote graduate education for U.S. citizens and permanent residents as they learn about the scientific research process, from developing a hypothesis, to performing experiments, to disseminating results through presentations and publications. The University of North Dakota hosted an NSF-supported REU Site with a theme of environmental sensor development during the summers of 2003, 2004, and 2005. This REU Site was a partnership between the UND School of Engineering & Mines and the Northern Great Plains Center for People & the Environment, a NASA-supported research center on the UND campus. These academic and research units have been collaborating on aerospace payload and environmental sensor development since the summer of 2000. What made this REU Site unique was that the participants worked on one large-scale environmental sensor development project during each summer as a multidisciplinary team, in addition to side independent research projects with individual faculty mentors. The primary goal was to teach the participants – mainly electrical, mechanical, and aerospace engineering undergraduate students and K-12 teachers – about systems engineering methodology, including design, build, integration, and test, with a complementary benefit of the participants practicing their communication and teamwork skills. The systems engineering projects that the participants designed during the summer months will be described, with an emphasis on lessons learned from recruiting and managing the team.

1. Introduction

The University of North Dakota hosted a Research Experiences for Undergraduates Site supported by the National Science Foundation during the summers of 2003, 2004, and 2005, with a theme of environmental sensor development. This REU Site was a partnership among the Departments of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering within the School of Engineering & Mines and the Upper Midwest Aerospace Consortium (UMAC)10 headquartered within the Northern Great Plains Center for People & the Environment (NGP CP&E). UMAC is a research consortium focused on sustainability. It consists of eight institutions geographically distributed among the states of North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho, providing information to farmers practicing precision agriculture, ranchers seeking optimum grazing capacities, foresters engaged in sustainable forestry, educators teaching responsible stewardship, and students of Earth system science. The School of Engineering & Mines and the Upper Midwest Aerospace Consortium have been collaborating on aerospace payload and environmental sensor development at UND since the summer of 2000. The University of North Dakota is also home to the John D. Odegard School of Aerospace Sciences, which offers some of the premier aviation and aerospace educational and research programs in the world.

Schultz, R., & Semke, W., & Olsen, D., & Johnson, A., & Beeri, O., & Seielstad, G. (2006, June), Satellites, Uavs, And Ground Based Wireless Sensor Networks: Lessons Learned From An Reu Site In Environmental Sensor Development Paper presented at 2006 Annual Conference & Exposition, Chicago, Illinois. 10.18260/1-2--292

ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2006 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. - Last updated April 1, 2015