A seven-member senior design team is designing a drone capable of carrying a human, with funding from a nearly $80,000 grant from NASA. The team will begin by developing a small-scale drone, dubbed the Hummingbird, capable of carrying a small amount of weight. Once the design is perfected, the team will apply the design to a large-scale model (nicknamed the Albatross) capable of carrying a human weighing up to 200 to 250 pounds. Though the students will operate the drone via remote control during initial experiments, the team aspires to ultimately make the drone autonomous. 

To receive the second half of their grant from NASA, the students needed to raise $2,000 of their own funds. The team used Rabbit Raisers – a crowdfunding platform of the SDSU Foundation designed to connect donors to short-term fundraising projects they are passionate about supporting. With quick community support and action, the design team met their fundraising goal and secured the final half of their NASA grant to move forward with the project.

Assistant mechanical engineering professor Marco Ciarcià is advising the project. The deadline for completing the NASA project is November 2, 2020. The endeavor reveals not only the groundbreaking innovation taking place at SDSU, but the impact of imagining greatness.