Engineering Infrastructure & Robots

With the recent closing of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, many engineers have weighed in with opinions on the ramifications of the recent failed repairs to the bridge.

A civil engineering consultant, Fari Barzegar (IL A ’85) criticized the recent repairs. “In my judgment, people were a little negligent to do a fix like that. The fix introduced more problems,” said Barzegar. Read more

As a result of the unsuccessful initial repairs Dr. Steven Fenves, IL A ’57, believes that Caltrans now needs to bring in outside bridge experts to review any future plans. Read article

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Engineers are also busy devising repair plans for a section of Interstate 40 in western North Carolina near Tennessee.

Large rocks, as large as a mobile home, fell during a rock slide this week. Engineers are trying to decide the best way to break up the rocks and remove them from the highway.

The current timeline is set at three months for completion of the project. Read article for more

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The Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) was the first to introduce an undergraduate robotics engineering program in 2007.

Now a team of WPI students have earned themselves and the program national acclaim for winning first prize in this month’s 2009 Regolith Excavation Challenge.

The competition is hosted by NASA in an effort to develop regolith excavation, the removal of soil from the moon’s surface. Teams built robots “capable of navigating around a moon-like surface and digging up moon soil and delivering it to a collection bin.”

WPI’s robot, Moonraker 2.0, was able to collect 84 percent more moon soil than the second-place robot. Visit the team’s website

The team consisted of Paul Ventimiglia (team leader), Ken Stafford (advisor; OH H ’80), Mike Ciaraldi (professor), Brian Loveland, Jennifer Flynn (MA A ’04), and Marc DeVidts.
Read article

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