(There are two parts to this FlyOutreach project. The outreach part is described in this post.)
The aerospace engineering aspect of this project is on designing, building, and integrating the tools (i.e. the flying vehicles) we use in the demonstration and practical sessions. We plan to build remote-controlled model planes and eventually autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), uniquely designed for demonstration purposes. We plan to integrate live-streaming video (e.g. FPV), GPS navigation, and other capabilities to make things more exciting.
Detailed analysis on the flight performance of these UAVs will need to be done, not only for the formality of the design process and to simulate the flight behavior, but also to show to the secondary school students that we can use math to predict how these planes will fly even before they take-off. That’ll be eye-opening and motivating to the students, I guess, when they see that the maths they are learning at school actually have some real applications.
Another engineering aspect of the project is on designing what tools to be used for the students in their hands-on activities. Obviously, when it comes to aerospace, it will have to be about building something that flies. But what, and how complex? That’s the interesting part, where we need to think carefully on this practical module so that the students get a real sense of excitement when building something creatively using the newly acquired knowledge they learn in this program. These hands-on activities should also bring into students a sense of exploration, self-discovery, trial-and-error, team-working, and competitiveness (probably within a competition between students to build the best products).
Update 5/2/2014: Students working on designing UAVs in this project will mostly use CEASIOM (Computerised Environment for Aircraft Synthesis and Integrated Optimisation Methods), a new multidisciplinary aircraft design software developed under a large European project through a collaboration of 17 partnerships.