Senior Matthew Burns recently designed a guidance system for airports. The system serves as an Anti-UAV Defense System, to detect and disable drones that pose a threat.

“While studying for my internship at NASA, I learned of the threat drones create to aircrafts near or at airports,” Burns said. “For example, should a drone be intentionally flown into the engine of an aircraft, the engine would sustain damage similar to that of a bird being sucked into the engine. I designed this for a competition called SkillsUSA during class.”

Burns created the system using Autodesk Inventor 3D CAD “Inventor.” He said he typically spent about 40 minutes a day for more than a semester to complete it.

“I’m absolutely amazed at Matthew’s accomplishment,” physics teacher Duane Walton said. “He takes my engineering design class, so I know how honed his skills are when it comes to tinkering and creating. [What Matthew has done] is an impressive feat.”

Burns created his project during his architecture class. 

“Matthew’s work really blows me away,” Wheat said. “He always works diligently in class, and I’m not surprised at what he was able to accomplish with SkillsUSA.”