People & Office Hours

Office Hours Schedule

Office hours are held weekly in the senior design lab. This sheet will be updated if any schedule changes. Make sure to double check the sheet before assuming there will be a TA present when you go!

Spring 2024 Instructors

Name Area
Prof. Mark Butala (Instructor)

butala@illinois.edu
Prof. Arne Fliflet (Instructor)
3056
afliflet@illinois.edu		 microwave generation and applications
Prof. Aaron Geiger (Instructor)

ageiger2@illinois.edu
Prof. Zhefeng Guo (Instructor)

zhefengg@illinois.edu
Prof. Blake Johnson (Instructor)

bejohnso@illinois.edu
Prof. Timothy Lee (Instructor)

lee527@illinois.edu
Zutai Chen (TA)

zutaic2@illinois.edu
Amritesh Dasari (TA)

mdasari2@illinois.edu
Alma Furayi (TA)

afurayi@illinois.edu
Caitlin Jones (TA)

caitlinj@illinois.edu
Xiaoyue Li (TA)

xiaoyuel@illinois.edu		 Image Processing, Deep Learning
Chunzeng Luo (TA)

cluo@illinois.edu
Muhammad Malik (TA)

mmalik@illinois.edu
Ian Meliala (TA)

imeliala@illinois.edu
Yiqun Niu (TA)

yiqunn2@illinois.edu
Qi Wang (TA)
ZJUI C318
qiw7@illinois.edu
Xinyi Xu (TA)

xinyixu@illinois.edu
Ronghui Zheng (TA)

ronghuiz@illinois.edu
Yuchuan Zhu (TA)

yuchuan5@illinois.edu
Yutao Zhuang (TA)

yutaoz@illinois.edu

Other Important People

Name Office Phone Email Area
Dean Biskup UIUC ECE Building   dbiskup2@illinois.edu UIUC TA

Propeller-less Multi-rotor

Featured Project

Our project explored the every-expanding field of drones. We wanted to solve a problem with the dangers of plastic propellers as well as explore new method of propulsion for drones.

Our design uses a centrifugal fan design inspired by Samm Shepard's "This is NOT a Propeller" video where he created a centrifugal fan for a radio controlled plane. We were able to design a fan that has a peak output of 550g per fan that is safe when crashing and when the impeller inside damaged.

The chassis and fans are made of laser-cut polystyrene and is powered using brushless motors typically used for radio-controlled helicopters.

The drone uses an Arduino DUE with a custom shield and a PCB to control the system via Electronic Speed Controllers. The drone also has a feedback loop that will try to level the drone using a MPU6050.

We were able to prove that this method of drone propulsion is possible and is safer than using hard plastic propellers.