Engineering Class Visits Draper Labs in Cambridge, MA

Upper School Engineering students visited Draper Laboratory in Cambridge, MA. They met with a rocket scientist who showed them a video demonstration of GENIE, a completely autonomous rocket and planetary landing guidance system. A few Draper employees demonstrated a quadrotor drone equipped with a camera guided GPS system for navigating areas not receptive to conventional GPS, such as in a building or underground. The last demo was an explanation of the psychophysiology lab where Draper has developed technology to detect physical manifestations of emotional conditions by correlating muscle movements, sweat rates, pupil dilation, and eye movements to induced emotions. This has potential applications in diagnosing Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, assessing terrorist intent, interrogations, and more. The students really enjoyed seeing the kind of work engineers do in the working world.