From a newfangled air conditioner to a system for tracking stolen bicycles, University of Louisville mechanical engineering students are turning classroom ideas into inventions. They’re bringing their prototypes to life and marketing those products to companies before they’ve even graduated.
Seniors taking professor Gary Osborne’s mechanical engineering class were tasked with designing Capstone Projects and inventing prototypes to present during the end of the year showcase last weekend.
“It is a culmination of everything they learned in their undergraduate curriculum and how to go through and design a project from stage one,” Osborne said.
Local companies and organizations asked students to design products that could solve a company’s problem. For example, the UofL Police Department asked the students to develop a new, less expensive anti-theft bicycle alarm and tracker system. UofL engineering student Elizabeth Cross not only created a working tracker but may have also designed something that could be used beyond bicycles.
“It uses an easy-to-use smartphone application, so anyone with a smartphone can track any of their products whether it be a bike or a backpack or a car,” said Cross.
Check out some of the students’ stories below:
