Mechanical Engineering Team Honored in Prestigious Aviation Competition

A team from the Mechanical Engineering Department at Wentworth Institute of Technology won an honorable mention during the recent Transportation Research Board’s Airport Cooperative Research Program (ACRP) design competition.  

Competing in the Airport Operation and Maintenance category, Wentworth students Eleonora Orfanini, Massimiliano Orfanini, Km Ashik, Chris Alcantara, and Emily Stevers examined “Enhancing Airport Runway Safety with UAV Technology and Convolutional Neural Networks for Foreign Object Debris (FOD) Detection.” Wentworth Professor Haifa El-Sadi served as faculty adviser. 

Now in its 17th year, the prestigious University Design Competition for Addressing Airport Needs encourages students to design innovative and practical solutions to challenges at airports.  

The Wentworth team design was reviewed by a panel of experts from the Federal Aviation Administration, industry, and academia. Members of the ACRP noted the team’s “well-written proposal that developed and tested a working drone prototype.”