Advanced Navigation recently wrapped up its 2023-24 Student Grant Program, which aims to encourage and financially assist top-performing engineering students in their studies and career advancement.
This year, applicants were challenged to envision an autonomous system that could enhance human life. The prompt sparked a range of innovative ideas, from medical drones and underwater robots to waste management solutions and space debris cleaners.
Michael Grieco from Columbia University emerged as this year’s winner. His essay stood out for its creativity and originality, addressing a significant societal issue while showcasing a solid grasp of engineering principles grounded in logic and practicality.
Advanced Navigation will provide Michael with a $5,000 grant to support his studies and future career in engineering.
Excerpt from Michael’s Essay, “Augmenting disaster response through a satellite-powered autonomous drone system.”
Given experience in satellite navigation systems and embedded device networks, I would implement a system to coordinate autonomous drones using navigation data for natural disaster response. This system allows computers to be able to rapidly navigate to areas unsafe for humans, namely wildfires, earthquake epicenters with massive debris, or nuclear radiation sites. The autonomy of this serves as an initial guide for subsequent human actions for containment or search and rescue.
