Engineering Expo to feature student projects

South Dakota State University’s Jerome J. Lohr College of Engineering invites the public to the Raven Precision Agriculture Center to view engineering students’ innovative project designs. 

The public is welcome to attend Tuesday, April 23, from 9-10 a.m. and noon-3 p.m. with an award ceremony to follow. This event features 39 teams presenting their senior design projects. 

Attendees will have the opportunity to engage with students as they present their designs and host demonstrations throughout the Precision Agriculture Center. 

“Students are displaying their two semesters of hard work to the public and to the university,” Michael Twedt, lecturer in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, said. 

Student projects are solving real-world problems for industry partners, community organizations and SDSU departments. Sponsors engaged with the student groups as they worked to solve an issue or problem and create a solution. 

Local and regional engineers will judge the projects to determine the top six award winners based on a set criteria for the event. 

These project/sponsor relationships are the result of an organization either not having the personnel or the resources to work on the specific project, according to Twedt. 

That’s where SDSU engineering students and faculty step in. “It’s a really good win-win situation for both,” Twedt said. 

Some examples of student projects include a wearable sleeve for nurse training, a tree-planting drone, a modernized golf cart, a laser targeting system and projects for NASA challenges. 

During the first semester of the senior project, students work on identifying and solving the problem with the goal of producing a prototype, which can be a physical or virtual product. In the second semester, students refine their ideas into final versions. 

Budgets for these projects range from $1,000 to tens of thousands of dollars, according to Twedt.