Many exciting things are happening this week for team Fly Bye. On Tuesday morning, we met with our liaison engineer Dr. Barukh Rohde for breakfast at Metro Diner. This was our first time meeting Dr. Rohde in person so we were all excited for the opportunity and enjoyed spending the morning with him! The team is also working hard to complete all components for the prototype we will be presenting as we travel to the USDA ARS station in Miami next week. Our CAD model, microprocessor/camera/code, and machine learning algorithm are all coming together to form one cohesive system that we plan on demonstrating for our upcoming trip.  

In addition to lots of progress on our image-based prototype, components for the infrared-based prototype are finally available for our use. There was a delay in the ordering of our Fresnel lenses due to necessity of paperwork between the university and the supplier, but now we have most of the components and can begin the breadboarding process. 

Fly Bye is excited to spend time in Miami for Halloween and most of all is excited to visit our sponsor’s laboratory at the USDA ARS station and meet Dr. Rohde’s colleagues!