United Launch Alliance is a leading launch provider for the world. Through their partnership with NASA and other aerospace leaders, ULA will soon be lifting humans into space from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Space Launch Complex 41.
Safety of the personnel involved is the number one priority, and ULA goes to great lengths to ensure the reliability of their emergency responses and prepare for the return of human space filght to the US.
One of such preparation is the Emergency Egress System - four zip line cables stretching from the crew platform of the launch service tower, 300 feet in the air, to the ground nearly a quarter mile away.
In the event of an emergemcy, personnel on the launch pad will ride away from tower at speeds exceeding 50 mph!
The requirement of any human-rated cable transport system include extensive inspection following a "major event" - these include lightning storms, high winds, and, of course, rocket launches. The EES does not lend itself to easy access, and at current,
inspectors are required to manually ride along each of the four cables and visually scrutinize every inch.
This interdisciplinary project sought to prototype an inspection device that captures images along the entire length of the EES and passes them to software (devised by a team of computer science students) that can identify anomalies along the cable.
The inspection device is automated, requiring only that the device be attached to a cable on the ground and an operation mode selected before it sets off under its own power to collect image data of an EES cable.
The stepper motor and rotary-encoder-based positioning is controlled by an MCU integrated into a custom-designed PCB. A Raspberry Pi 4 Model B governs the capture and indexing of images from four USB camera modules mounted around the circumference of the cable.
Forward- and rear-facing ultrasnoic modules alert the device to obstacles and tie-downs along the EES so that it can return to the operator on the ground. Data is stored on the Raspberry Pi's microSD card which can be easily accessed by a computer hosting the
computer science team's analysis software via SSH.
This project was funded by United Launch Alliance. Thank you ULA!
Our primary contact:
Michael DeArce
Launch Ops
Desk: (321) 730-0421
Michael.A.DeArce@ulalaunch.com
Senior Design 1 Divide and Conquer
Senior Design 1 Documentation
Conference Paper
Senior Design 2 Final Documentation
CDR Presentation Slides
Final Presentation Slides
PCB Source Files
Raspberry Pi Files
Or you can download the videos (WARNING: large files):
ECE Presentation
Project Demo
Jason Wessner, a senior electrical engineering student at the University of Central Florida. He is presently working at NASA Kennedy Space Center with the Spaceport Integration group. He is a master electrician with more than 10 years in the commercial and industrial fields.
Bryan Core, a senior electrical & computer engineering student at the University of Central Florida. He is currently employed as a contractor at Lockheed Martin Rotary & Mission Systems in Orlando, FL as a test engineering intern.
Zachary Gilliland, a senior computer engineering student at the University of Central Florida. He has prototyped multiple consumer applications during his time at UCF and served as the interdisciplinary lead for this project.
Thank you to the mecahnical engineering student team:
Shane Grayford
Nelson Rodriguez
Thank you to the computer science student team:
Stephen Faber
Joseph Potter