Embry-Riddle Students Take Top Honors in FAA Design Competition With Runway Safety, Airport Management Projects
June 20, 2013 – Four teams from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s Daytona Beach, Fla., Campus have outperformed the 62 other colleges and more than 1,200 other students at the recent 2012-2013 FAA Design Competition for Universities.
The annual competition, which challenges U.S. college students to find innovative solutions to real-world airport and runway safety issues, included 244 submitted design proposals in six categories.
The Embry-Riddle teams consisting of Human Factors students finished No. 1 and No. 2 in the category of Runway Safety, No. 1 in Airport Management & Planning and No. 3 in Airport Operation & Maintenance.
“This competition gives our students the opportunity to learn about and gain experience researching a problem, designing a novel solution, working as a team under time pressure and writing a professional-quality technical report,” said Dr. Kelly Neville, an associate professor of Human Factors and Systems who co-advised the team along with Marty Lauth, an associate professor of Applied Aviation Sciences . “At the same time, they’re learning about a new domain, such as runway safety. The first-place teams additionally gain valuable experience networking and presenting their work at the professional conferences they’re invited to attend.”
First Place
Category: Airport Management & Planning
Project Title: eAPT: The Electronic Airport Planning Tool
Project Description: The team’s proposed map-based tool combines airport pavement information with aircraft specifications in SMART board technology to help airport operators accurately and efficiently create plans for complicated airport events such as air shows.
Student Team Members: Amanda Peterson, Marcus Peterson, Andrew Reinlieb, Stephen Tignor, Nathalie Vazquez, Hemali Verani and Michael Vincent.
First Place
Category: Runway Safety, Runway Incursions & Runway Excursions
Project Title: INSPIRE: Keeping You on Track
Project Description: The team designed an Intuitive Navigation System for the Prevention of Incursions in the Runway Environment (INSPIRE) to serve as a situational awareness aid that supports heads-up, eyes-out taxi operations.
Student Team Members: Sarah Cullen, N’diaye Diabira, Michael Fehlinger, Paul Gillett, Jason Goodman and Breanna Goring.
Second Place
Category: Runway Safety, Runway Incursions & Runway Excursions
Project Title: AIRIP: Advanced Integrated Runway Incursion Prevention
Project Description: AIRIP would augment current runway safety systems by instantaneously broadcasting radio alerts to aircraft at risk in the runway environment, allowing quicker initiation of evasive action.
Student Team Members: Thomas Harter, Chelsea Iwig, Devin Liskey, Chloe Liu, Will Lively and Taylor Martin.
Third Place
Category: Airport Operation & Maintenance
Project Title: Illuminating the Night Sky
Project Description: The team proposes making all LED obstruction lighting in the national airspace system compatible with night vision goggles, allowing pilots to use aided vision for takeoffs, landings and navigation.
Student Team Members: Tara Baseil, Anne-Claire Blondeau, Chris Bryan and Olivia Crowe.
The first-place teams will receive their awards and present their design projects at FAA Headquarters on July 17. In addition, they will discuss their work at the Airport Consultants Council’s Transportation Security Administration Summer Series Workshop on July 18. The prize-winning design proposals will be posted on the competition website at http://FAADesignCompetition.odu.edu.
About Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, the world’s largest, fully accredited university specializing in aviation and aerospace, is a nonprofit, independent institution offering more than 40 baccalaureate, master’s and Ph.D. degree programs in its colleges of Arts and Sciences, Aviation, Business and Engineering. Embry-Riddle educates students at residential campuses in Daytona Beach, Fla., and Prescott, Ariz., and through the Worldwide Campus with more than 150 locations in the United States, Europe, Asia and the Middle East. The university is a major research center, seeking solutions to real-world problems in partnership with the aerospace industry, other universities and government agencies. For more information, visit www.embryriddle.edu, follow us on Twitter (@EmbryRiddle) and www.facebook.com/EmbryRiddleUniversity, and find expert videos at YouTube.com/EmbryRiddleUniv.
