Reduce, Reuse, Rotor: The Zero-Dollar Drone Challenge as Experiential Engineering Education
Presentation Type
Poster Presentation
In Person or Zoom Presentation
Virtual via Zoom
Campus
Worldwide
Status
Staff
Faculty/Staff Department
College of Arts & Sciences
Presentation Description/Abstract
As artificial intelligence increasingly automates routine technical tasks, engineering education faces a growing need to emphasize the durable human skills that technology cannot replace: creativity, judgment, collaboration, and learning through experimentation. This poster presents the Zero-Dollar Drone Challenge, an experiential-learning model in which students design, build, test, and refine uncrewed aircraft systems (UAS) using reclaimed electronic components and locally sourced reusable materials.
Rather than assembling commercial kits, students investigate how waste streams can become engineering resources. Salvaged magnets, copper wire, batteries, sensors, and cameras from discarded electronics are evaluated for reuse, while invasive species such as kudzu are explored as woven or molded structural materials. Students also examine tourism byproducts, including retired festival banners, hotel key cards, beverage containers, promotional signage, souvenir packaging, and discarded recreational fishing line, as potential sources of lightweight structural components, landing gear, payload mounts, and protective housings.
Working in teams, students engage in iterative design cycles that include material selection, rapid prototyping, performance testing, failure analysis, repair, and redesign. The project intentionally embraces productive struggle and experimentation as essential elements of learning. Potential challenge formats include tiered “% reused” competitions that reward creative resourcefulness, rapid-prototype sprints in which teams construct hover-capable aircraft from reclaimed materials within a fixed time window, crash-and-repair rounds that emphasize resilience and maintainability, and materials showdowns comparing the strength-to-weight performance of kudzu, bamboo, cardboard, and other unconventional airframe materials. Students maintain detailed bills of materials, test logs, and design records, with documentation recognized as a core engineering skill that supports reproducibility and continuous improvement.
Success is measured not only by flight performance but also by sustainability, repairability, teamwork, innovation, and engineering reasoning. AI tools may support research, modeling, and design exploration, but the central learning outcomes remain rooted in hands-on construction, human judgment, and collaborative problem solving.
The project positions waste materials not as limitations but as catalysts for innovation. By combining circular-economy principles with authentic engineering challenges, the Zero-Dollar Drone Challenge demonstrates how experiential learning can cultivate adaptable problem-solvers capable of transforming resource constraints into opportunities for creative design, sustainable engineering, and community impact.
Keywords
experiential learning; student innovation; project-based learning; uncrewed aircraft systems; circular economy; e-waste; tourism byproducts; invasive species; rapid prototyping; sustainable engineering; drone education; repairability; engineering design challenges
Reduce, Reuse, Rotor: The Zero-Dollar Drone Challenge as Experiential Engineering Education
As artificial intelligence increasingly automates routine technical tasks, engineering education faces a growing need to emphasize the durable human skills that technology cannot replace: creativity, judgment, collaboration, and learning through experimentation. This poster presents the Zero-Dollar Drone Challenge, an experiential-learning model in which students design, build, test, and refine uncrewed aircraft systems (UAS) using reclaimed electronic components and locally sourced reusable materials.
Rather than assembling commercial kits, students investigate how waste streams can become engineering resources. Salvaged magnets, copper wire, batteries, sensors, and cameras from discarded electronics are evaluated for reuse, while invasive species such as kudzu are explored as woven or molded structural materials. Students also examine tourism byproducts, including retired festival banners, hotel key cards, beverage containers, promotional signage, souvenir packaging, and discarded recreational fishing line, as potential sources of lightweight structural components, landing gear, payload mounts, and protective housings.
Working in teams, students engage in iterative design cycles that include material selection, rapid prototyping, performance testing, failure analysis, repair, and redesign. The project intentionally embraces productive struggle and experimentation as essential elements of learning. Potential challenge formats include tiered “% reused” competitions that reward creative resourcefulness, rapid-prototype sprints in which teams construct hover-capable aircraft from reclaimed materials within a fixed time window, crash-and-repair rounds that emphasize resilience and maintainability, and materials showdowns comparing the strength-to-weight performance of kudzu, bamboo, cardboard, and other unconventional airframe materials. Students maintain detailed bills of materials, test logs, and design records, with documentation recognized as a core engineering skill that supports reproducibility and continuous improvement.
Success is measured not only by flight performance but also by sustainability, repairability, teamwork, innovation, and engineering reasoning. AI tools may support research, modeling, and design exploration, but the central learning outcomes remain rooted in hands-on construction, human judgment, and collaborative problem solving.
The project positions waste materials not as limitations but as catalysts for innovation. By combining circular-economy principles with authentic engineering challenges, the Zero-Dollar Drone Challenge demonstrates how experiential learning can cultivate adaptable problem-solvers capable of transforming resource constraints into opportunities for creative design, sustainable engineering, and community impact.