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Engineering on the fly

By Cortney Krauss, Comm ’11

A model helicopter, its whirling blades flashing the Marquette logo, zoomed across Central Mall, outside the College of Engineering and inside the cavernous interior of Cudahy Hall last semester. At the remote was graduate student Michael Ziwisky, Eng '09.

"I don't trust my piloting skills enough to fly in smaller areas like hallways or classrooms," he explains.

Ziwisky used his electrical and computer engineering skills to create the mobile engineering exhibit. The LED lights on the helicopter's blades can be programmed to display any image Ziwisky inputs into a computer program he designed.

Ziwisky first started tinkering with model helicopters in high school. He purchased a used helicopter, deconstructed it and rebuilt it with better, newer parts. He was inspired to design his latest project by an idea to "paint images in the sky" — and a goal of promoting the department and Nanoscale Devices Lab of his academic adviser, Dr. Chung Hoon Lee, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering.

With Lee's support, Ziwisky built a prototype for the circuit. After successfully building and testing the circuits, he needed to design a circuit board small and light enough that it wouldn't disturb the balance of the helicopter blades. The next step was creating a computer program that could transfer images onto a microcontroller operating the light display.

Working in his free time, Ziwisky spent close to 100 hours completing the project. And it helped to create more than just a cool show-and-tell piece: One of the components Ziwisky developed is now used to conduct electrical measurements of nanoscale devices in Lee's lab. Light-emitting diodes are also one of Lee's research areas, and he encouraged Ziwisky to use LEDs to light the helicopter's blades.

"As soon as Dr. Lee and I started discussing the project, the first thing that popped into my head was an image of the MU logo flying around against a dark sky," Ziwisky says.  It took several weeks, but he finally did it, and the helicopter quickly became a mascot for the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering that Ziwisky hopes can be taken to engineering fairs. "The helicopter is dynamic and fun; it gets students excited," he says.

Lee was also glad to see electrical engineering on display. He calls the helicopter "an exciting opportunity to show past, current and future Marquette families how the researchers and studies in Electrical and Computer Engineering can help to control the helicopter, an extremely complex system, safely, reliably and precisely."

Ziwisky has found another creative use for it. For his sister's 30th birthday, he turned the helicopter into the ultimate arts and craft-inspired birthday card, with blades lighted to say, "Happy birthday, Favorite Sister."

Ziwisky doesn't have any plans to take the project to the next level, which is a light display on a full-sized helicopter. Admirers of the project say it can be used in helicopter rescue missions to communicate to people on the ground, although Ziwisky says the only practical use he can see for it is in advertising, specifically with news helicopters.

For the moment, Ziwisky is enjoying his turn in the spotlight. After being featured on the engineering website, hackaday.com, his YouTube video of the invention got 12,000 views.