Honors Engineers Create BB-8™ Replicas

What do Honors College engineers do in their free time? They take on more projects! One of these projects is GC-49, GCU’s own replicas of BB-8™ from Star Wars. Our idea was to design, build, fabricate and paint four full-sized BB-8™-style robots for future use in STEM workshops and high school visits to promote the engineering department.

The project is led by honors engineering students Joel Conrad, Rachael Wecker, Destiny Woods – and me! What started in January as a short-term project, was soon realized to be more work than expected.

Our team decided to create an Engineering Hands-On Workshop to get other engineers involved. We wanted to increase engineering students’ knowledge of robotics, problem-solving and shop equipment. The students who attended this two-day workshop got to experience and work on several different parts of the robots.

Among these students were Yaniss Chougui and Breana Schiete. While Yaniss worked on prototyping and assembling the robotics, Breana worked on the body of a GC-49 by finding the circumference of the sphere, applying Bondo and sanding the surface. There were many aspects of creating these robots that required different skills and equipment, which presented a variety of challenges for us to work through.

Breana noted, “This experience, and experiences like this, are helpful for the future because it allows me to work with others to accomplish a goal along with learning new concepts or ways to do things. These events are educational as well as social because I am able to meet new people involved in a major similar to mine.”

GCU offers dynamic engineering degree programs in a variety of disciplines. Learn more about our programs and admission to the Honors College by visiting our website or contacting us today using the Request More Information button.