Re-Engineering a Mini-Drone as a Project for First-Year Engineering Students

This full paper will explore a novel idea of re-engineering or redesigning a mini-drone in a first-year engineering design course at our mid-size technology university. Reverse engineering has been used to teach the design process to first-year students for a long time. This project takes it a step further, where students not only reverse engineer the drone but also redesign the drone to make it better. Using a drone as the product makes the project relevant and interesting to the students. The students start by measuring the parts of the unassembled drone, design all components in a 3D modeling software, assemble all parts to create the complete drone in the 3D modeling software. The drone is then physically assembled by putting all the original pieces from the kit together. A workshop is organized to help students learn soldering, as the motors and LEDs have to be soldered onto the circuit board. Finally, students are asked to come up with a new design for the drone. The newly designed model has to fit the battery, the circuit board, and the motors. This part will then be 3D printed and attached to the original drone. The goal is to make the drone fly with this new design. This also helps expose students to our makerspace in the very first semester and encourages them to use the facility for future projects. This paper will include details on how the project was implemented in our class and an assessment to show the effectiveness of this new teaching technique.