team

The people behind the Tetracopter™ and how to contact them

All four team members are in the class of 2010 at Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering. The Tetracopter™ was designed and constructed for Olin's ENGR1110 Principles of Engineering (PoE) course during the fall term of 2007. PoE exemplifies the exciting, hands-on attitude Olin takes towards educating the engineers of the future; our sole charge for this project was to "design a mechatronic system around a PIC microcontroller." By requiring that each project "include both a nontrivial mechanical system design and fabrication and a nontrivial electronic system involving hardware and firmware aspects," PoE puts first, second, and third-year undergraduates with varying backgrounds and majors together to combine their skills and learn from each other while completing a project. Scroll over each of us to learn more about who we are, where we came from, and what we brought to the design and construction of the Tetracopter™.

Evan Morikawa is an Electrical and Computer Engineering major from San Diego California. He designed and constructed this website along with Andy Barry. Evan’s other contributions included the Tetracopter™’s graphic design; finance and records; material analysis and selection; procurement; Solidworks preliminary designs; software debugging; and overall planning and organization. His primary skills and passions are in web development, cartography, aviation, astronomy, and software development.

Andy Barry is an Electrical and Computer Engineering major from South Hadley, MA. Andy's main work on the Tetracopter™ was the electrical and software systems. He designed and built the circuitry and wrote the control system for the PIC. His biggest challenge was reducing the response time of the PIC from 20 microseconds to a mere four. Occasionally he attempted mechanical design, although the other team members usually encouraged him to return to the circuit or software and often did not fully appreciate his genius in the area known as "bending."

Marco Morales is a Mechanical Engineering Major from San Diego California. He was instrumental in the mechanical design and construction of the Tetracopter™’s frame. He spent a lot of time creating and redesigning CAD for each of the redesigns of the Tetracopter. Other contributions included machining, integration of mechanical and electrical components, overall project organization as well as the project website . For whatever reason Marco enjoyed coming up with new things to do before the task at hand was completed, which resulted in several hours doing work of disputed importance.

Andy Getzendanner is an Electrical and Computer Engineering major from Atlanta, GA. Though he is a software specialist by day, the odd jobs he performed as part of this project included constant assembly, reassembly, and redesign of the power bus and the dubious task of holding onto early prototype craft during testing. He claims credit for the second generation emergency shutoff mechanism which entailed tying a string around the switch in the main power bus.