Kate Carroll, Administrator, Creativity & Innovation
“A highlight was an interview with SSIG recipient, Logan Henning, discussing his octocopter project.”
A Conversation with Logan Henning, Student Seed Innovation Grant Recipient
Tell us a little bit about yourself.
I’m a fourth-year physics major at Colorado College. Technically I’m a junior because I took a gap semester to do an internship with this company called Rainforest Connection and a gap semester to do an internship with NASA.
What is the Student Seed Innovation Grant project that you are working on?
[My SSIG project is an] octocopter project that I’ve named Open Octo because it’s an open-source project to learn how to build an octocopter that you can fly on. If you’ve ever seen a drone, those are called quadcopters because they have four propellers on them. What I’m building has eight. It’s large scale—it’s going to be about 11 feet by 11 feet. It’s going to have eight big propellers and I’ll be able to fly on it. The main goal of the project is to make manned flights more accessible.
What are some of the benefits of working on this project?
I’ve connected with some really cool people in the aerospace engineering world. I’ve met with different founders of aerospace companies to talk about how they built their own company, and how [they took] an idea from the beginning prototype stages to an actual product.
What has been your build process?
There are a couple of different main phases that you go through when you’re prototyping something like this. First, the research phase: you have to understand the technology behind it and know what else has been tried in the industry so that you’re not redoing other people’s work. It took about nine months to research. After the research phase, you’ve got to acquire all the parts and start assembling. Once you assemble your first prototype, it’s just iteration on iteration, improving on the things you don’t like about it.
What’s the future of your project?
The way this project is oriented is open source. Basically, everyone has access to every single file that I’ve ever created related to this project. If someone’s motivated, they can follow in my steps and do exactly what I’ve done. I have thought about turning it into a business where I just provide the parts, and then someone can follow along with the manual and not worry about anything except putting it together themselves. So maybe I’ll turn it into a business, but at present I see it influencing my future because I plan on going into aerial vehicle engineering for a career. Through this project, I’ve been able to connect with a bunch of different companies.
Do you have any advice for students who are considering applying for a Student Seed Innovation Grant?
Yeah. Tip number one: just do it. I’ve learned so much through this project, more than in any class or in any other job I’ve ever worked. [SSIG] gives you the opportunity to really dive into something that you’re passionate about. Once you start diving into the project, the more you learn about your project, the more you get into it, the more fun it becomes. When I started this project, I was like, “This will be a fun project, but I’m not sure I really want to commit to this big of a thing.” But the more I got into it, I was like, “This is freaking awesome.”
