RCE 92: Michigan Autonomous Aerial Vehicles
Channel: Research Computing and Engineering
Date: 27/01/2021

Recorded 9/2014
https://www.rce-cast.com/Podcast/rce-92-michigan-autonomous-aerial-vehicles.html


 Brock Palen and Jeff Squyres speak with Jose Gomez and Alec Ten Harmsel about Michigan Autonomous Aerial Vehicles (MAAV) a team of students solving challenges autonomous flight. 


Jose Gomez is currently a senior studying Aerospace Engineering at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI. He chose the aerospace industry because of his interests in space exploration and his studies have given me a deep appreciation for propulsion and structural analysis. For the past three years he have been on the structures sub-team of Michigan's Autonomous Aerial Vehicles team; his work with the team has focused on designing and fabricating custom composite airframes. In his freetime I enjoy reading science fiction and doing amateur stand-up comedy.

Alec has been on MAAV for nearly two years doing a variety of computer science and mechanical design. In addition to designing a heatsink and manufacturing various parts of the vehicle, Alec mostly focuses on Computer Vision techniques and optimizing the path planning algorithms. Alec also manages the navigation software development as well as all of MAAV's IT infrastructure.