Getting hands dirty with hardware

The aerospace engineering department opened up its hands-on Sensors and Actuators Lab Wednesday afternoon to the people who helped make it possible during an event at the Woolrich Laboratories on campus. National Instruments provided funding that allowed the department to create an experiment-based graduate class for students to learn how to use aerospace hardware first-hand. In return, students who took the class last spring gave National Instruments executives demonstrations of what they were able to accomplish with their hardware.

"Most of the time we wind up talking about a lot of devices that students never get their hands on," said UT engineering associate professor Glenn Lightsey. "This is exactly the kind of lab I would have wanted when I was a student."

Last spring Lightsey taught the course for the first time to a group of nine students. He said he hopes to eventually expand it to undergraduates in the engineering departments.

The class involves taking a new piece of hardware, learning how it works and developing lab experiments for other students. The lab consists of seven PC workstations, each of which has different hardware. Students work to solve real-world spacecraft problems, such as using machines to determine spaceship orientation and developing rovers for planet exploration.

Aerospace engineering graduate student Jessica Williams worked on a project known as the hexapod robot, a six-legged robot that can walk in a square when the operator presses a button on a PlayStation 2 controller.

"These are pieces of hardware that can actually be used to fly on a ship," said Williams, who hopes to work with mission planning when she graduates. "The application for future space missions is great. You can't get it in any other class."

James Truchard, president and CEO of National Instruments, said he was proud to be involved in the process of creating such a lab.

"Engineering is about finding new and better ways to do things," he said. "Next time, we'll figure out how to use a Wii."

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