ABOUT US
The University of Hawai’i Advanced Balloon Satellite (UHABS) program was started by Dr. Trevor Sorensen in 2009 as a part of the ME 419 Astronautics class. The UHABS-1 through 4 were completed in ME 419 and UHABS-5 through 7 were completed as ME 481/482 senior design projects. The UHABS-8 team consists of seven mechanical engineering seniors completing the project as a ME 481/482 senior design project.
MEET TEAM HŌKŪWA'A
Isabella Kotsol
Project Manager
Isabella is responsible for executing the project and keeping the team on schedule. She serves as the team’s liaison to Dr. Sorensen and TA Christy Chock. Isabella was selected for this role because of her experience on another project and is familiar with the senior design project process.
Jared Choy
Mechanical Co-Lead
Jared is responsible for the designing the component layout within the vehicle, CAD modeling, and the calculations used for the analysis in the design of the boat. Jared is also responsible for working with the leads of the other subteams to ensure that each component in the recovery vehicle works as intended.
Gabrielle Rose Baguio
Systems Integrator
As the systems engineer, Gabrielle is responsible for system synthesis, verifying and validating that all interfaces and their respective requirements are defined and accounted for. She is also responsible for system-level testing and integration, risks analysis.
Halona Trias
Mechanical Co-Lead
Halona is responsible for designing the shape of the recovery vehicle, waterproofing the hull, and creating the mechanical team’s detailed testing plan. Halona is also responsible for working closely with the leads of the other subteams and to ensure that each component in the recovery vehicle works as intended.
Piper Kline
Electrical Lead / Financial Officer
As the electrical lead, Piper is responsible for the functionality of all the electrical components inside and on the recovery vehicle, and ensuring that the components are compatible with COSMOS and ArduPilot.
As the financial officer, Piper is responsible for monitoring the costs of the project and ensuring that the team stays on budget.
Kaitlyn Matsunaga
Ground Control Station Co-Lead
Kaitlyn is responsible for working with COSMOS. Using COSMOS, she will program codes so commands can be sent to the payload. She is also responsible for figuring out how to get COSMOS to function properly with the components in the payload so that the ground control station team can receive telemetry data and live video footage.
Micah Raquini
Ground Control Station Co-Lead
Micah is responsible for the autonomous portions of the project. For the autonomous operations, Micah will be using ArduPilot to configure how to track the recovery vehicle and is responsible for figuring out how the recovery vehicle will be able to autonomously navigate itself to a predetermined location.