Ogden News

From left: WKU students Yerald Hernandez, Marcus Todd, Jaber Al-Darawish and Payton Donohoo

A team of four WKU Mechanical Engineering seniors competed in the Student Design Competition at the American Society of Mechanical Engineers E-Fest North Student Professional Development Conference April 5-7 at Michigan State University.

The WKU team, part of the Engineering capstone project sequence, included Payton Donohoo of Island, Yerald Hernandez of Bowling Green, Jaber Aldarawish of Bowling Green and Marcus Todd of Corbin. Dr. Manohar Chidurala is the faculty advisor.

The 2019 competition required teams to design and build a remotely controlled robot that could quickly and accurately collect and place a variety of balls balanced on PVC tubes without dropping the balls. A total of 47 teams from 36 universities around the world competed, including Alabama, Arkansas, Baylor, Florida, Iowa, Missouri, North Carolina State, Purdue, Rensselaer, Virginia Tech and Wisconsin.

"This group of students did a tremendous job this year designing, building and testing a vehicle that functioned flawlessly during the competition,” Dr. Chidurala said. “We were consistently one of the top five scoring teams in the early rounds, and were eliminated in the round of 16. The high quality of these students and the device they created, and their enthusiastic participation speaks to the quality of students in the ME program."

Contact: Dr. Manohar Chidurala, (270) 745-2489