High School Projects

Green Drone AZ High School Project Involvement

In addition to delivering online curriculum, the GDAZ team works with individuals or groups of students to develop concepts for Senior Capstone Projects and Science Fair entries. We provide mentorship and support for student groups as they develop new, innovative ways of solving problems within the environmental and drone fields. In the 2020-2021 school year, GDAZ was fortunate enough to work with students on four separate projects.

2020-2021 Projects

The Effect of Airflow on Heat Dissipation in a Active Cooling System

Students engaged with staff to research possible solutions to problems or inefficiencies that professionals may encounter in the field while performing drone data collection. This particular group landed on developing a custom cooling case for the iPad used during flight operations to solve overheating problems that GDAZ staff have experienced in the past. Students performed analysis testing with various case heights and fan designs to develop a prototype case.

Red Mountain Engineering Senior Capstone Project (team of 3), recipient of $1,000 scholarship to Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University

Custom Field Desk Tripod Design for Flight Operations

Students engaged with staff to research possible solutions to problems or inefficiencies that professionals may encounter in the field while performing drone data collection. After learning about the challenges of staging flight operations in rugged terrain and having to hike all supplies in, this group decided to design a custom platform that mounts to a tripod to house the drone controller and iPad. This field desk has a quick attachment design similar to those found on standard tripods allowing the platform to be added to any tripod for a quick desk in the field.

Red Mountain Engineering Senior Capstone Project

UAS Mountable Repeater to Assist with Wildfire Operations

Students met with GDAZ Staff to discuss project ideas focused around invasive plants and wildfire prevention. After discussion, GDAZ staff led students to consider something more achievable in scale and practicality to the wildland firefighting community. GDAZ staff connected students with Todd Abel, Type I Operations Section Chief with the Southwest Area Incident Management Team (Team 2). This project was made to help firefighters reliably extend the radio range over large distances. Stakeholder Todd Abel explained to students that when terrain is rough it becomes very difficult for radio signals to reliably make it to the desired location. Students built a drone with a repeater attached to it in order to extend the range of communication. The idea was that if the drone is line of sight to the firefighters and the control tower, then the signal would lose significantly less information as it traveled.

Red Mountain Engineering Senior Capstone Project, 3rd Place AZ Science Fair

AI-Based Wildfire Prevention System (WPS)

Green Drone AZ had the pleasure of hosting this 8^th grade student in a summer camp as part of our partnership with the SciTech Institute and their Chief Science Officers program. This year, she set out to develop an AI based machine learning platform which utilizes satellite imagery to identify global hot spots. WPS is a fully automated, cost-efficient AI-based solution that performs four main functions: preprocessing (retrieving and masking), learning (training), identification of hotspots and drone deployment. The power of the AI-based Wildfire Prevention System developed can be applied to any location in the world to identify hotspots, deploy drones to spray fire retardant and therefore, prevent wildfires.

CSO, Basha Middle School, 1^st Place AZ Science Fair: Computer Science