Highschool sophomore Abigail Merchant has made it her mission to make use of know-how to cut back flood-related deaths. The 15-year-old lives in Orlando, Fla., a state the place flooding is frequent partially due to its low elevation.
The altering local weather is growing the danger. Hotter air holds extra water, resulting in heavier-than-usual rainfall and extra flooding, in response to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Abigail Service provider
College
Orlando Science Center Excessive Constitution, in Florida
Grade
Sophomore
Hobbies
Basketball and taking part in the drums
Presently satellites, synthetic aperture radar, and GPS are used to gather information on flood harm, monitor the placement of victims, and talk with emergency responders. However know-how failures and sluggish data transmission speeds result in delays in response time, Service provider says. The rise in international flooding has intensified the necessity for extra correct and dependable strategies.
Final yr Service provider constructed what she says is a more practical solution to monitor and gather information throughout floods: a small, cheap, standardized CubeSat built-in with artificial intelligence. The little satellites use a multiple of 10- by 10- by 10-centimeter units—which permits producers to develop their batteries, solar panels, computer systems, and different elements as off-the-shelf elements.
The CubeSat takes photos of an space and makes use of pattern recognition to detect flooding, assess infrastructure harm, and monitor survivors.
Service provider offered her paper on the gadget at this yr’s IEEE Region 3 annual convention, IEEE SoutheastCon.
“IEEE is a foundational a part of my development as a younger researcher,” she says. “It turned engineering from my dream to actuality.”
Constructing a CubeSat at MIT
Service provider says her curiosity in disaster response was sparked after studying that it could possibly take a number of hours for emergency employees to obtain satellite tv for pc information.
Decided to discover a sooner technique, she started researching applied sciences and found what CubeSats can do.
“CubeSats are very agile, scalable, and able to forming constellations (multiple-satellite teams) that replace information in practically actual time,” she says. “The concept that these small satellites—which match into the palm of your hand—may ship life-saving insights sooner than conventional methods actually impressed me to push the idea additional.”
Final yr Service provider and three of her classmates have been accepted into MIT’s Beaver Works Build a CubeSat Challenge, the place groups of as much as 5 U.S. highschool college students got eight months to develop a satellite tv for pc able to finishing a space-based analysis mission.
Service provider’s group—the Satellite Sentinels—constructed a CubeSat powered by a convolutional neural community (CNN) that may determine closely impacted flood zones and remotely gather information for disaster relief and environmental monitoring. CNNs analyze picture information for sample recognition.
Service provider was the group’s payload programmer and led the mission’s design and simulation efforts, which included planning, configuring {hardware}, and growing autonomous software program and algorithms to handle the payload.
The group started by making a 3D mannequin of the gadget to visualise and refine the location of its elements. The know-how used—together with a Raspberry Pi, a number of sensors, and a digicam—was housed in a transparent plastic dice.
The center CubeSat was developed by Service provider and her group through the MIT Beaver Works Construct a CubeSat Problem. On the left is a business 1U CubeSat whereas on the best is a prototype of Service provider’s present design. Abigail Service provider
The gadget, which price US $310 to construct, weighs about 495 grams and was remotely linked to a laptop computer through Bluetooth throughout ground-based testing. The pc incorporates a machine learning algorithm—written by Service provider utilizing Python—that analyzes collected photos to detect flooding.
The CubeSat takes a high-definition picture of its environment each 2 minutes and transmits it to the laptop computer. The satellite tv for pc transfers as much as 1,500 photos day by day and shops them on a 16-gigabyte SD card.
The algorithm then analyzes patterns, together with adjustments within the water’s shade and the picture’s pixel density. When the algorithm detects flooding, the gadget can alert emergency responders.
“Whereas many present methods function on multihour cycles, the CubeSat captures high-resolution photos each 2 minutes,” Service provider says. “The system can then set off alerts which might be delivered to first responders through SMS or e-mail.”
To check their system, Service provider and her group constructed a metropolis mannequin product of Lego blocks in an empty bathtub. They positioned the CubeSat over it, and it took photos of the scene. They then added water and grime to make it look extra like an actual flood. The CubeSat efficiently transferred the pictures to the laptop computer, and the algorithm detected the flooding.
Out of 30 groups, the Satellite tv for pc Sentinels positioned third.
Persevering with her work at Accenture
Service provider is constant her analysis on flood-prevention applied sciences at Accenture in Richmond, Va., the place she works remotely as a payload proprietor and designer for the corporate’s CubeSat launch group.
After the MIT program ended, Service provider determined to scale her mission. She reached out to her former mentor Chris Hudson, the worldwide technical lead in house cybersecurity at Accenture. He provided her an internship.
Service provider is working to make the transition from prototype to purposeful product however, she says, wants to beat obstacles she encountered together with her MIT mission.
The principle one was that the mannequin struggled to detect flooding in variable circumstances. It’s as a result of the CNN mannequin wants context, she says. With out it, the mannequin can misread complicated visible cues. To repair the problem, Service provider skilled the algorithm to identify flooding by figuring out colours in particular person pixels.
Transmitting photos utilizing Bluetooth labored in her toilet, however it isn’t fairly as helpful when CubeSats are orbiting 700 kilometers above the bottom.
“For those who’ve used a Bluetooth headset earlier than, you recognize it disconnects the second you stroll away from the gadget it’s linked to,” she says. “That isn’t going to work when the CubeSat constellation is in orbit.”
She steered the Accenture group swap to SubMiniature Model A (SMA) antennas. The RF antennas hook up with the CubeSats utilizing an SMA connector.
“The event course of has been some of the formative experiences of my profession to this point,” Service provider says. “Working by the payload design and validation and assembly with these groups has given me a lot expertise, particularly for my age.”
Her payload is predicted to be launched early subsequent yr.
An aerospace internship at MIT
Service provider is an intern on the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, the varsity’s largest interdisciplinary lab, with 60 analysis teams. CSAIL is led by IEEE Fellow Daniela Rus, recipient of the 2025 IEEE Edison Medal.
The internship is distant, and Service provider conducts analysis in a laboratory on the University of Central Florida, in Orlando.
“IEEE is a foundational a part of my development as a younger researcher. It turned engineering from a dream to actuality.”
In that function, Service provider is specializing in cognitive cartography, a technique for structuring complicated data into semantic maps that reveal how concepts and ideas relate to 1 one other. She makes use of embedding models, a kind of machine studying that converts data into numerical representations. The embeddings enable computer systems to acknowledge similarities and relationships between ideas, even when they’re described in several methods. The strategy helps an AI product perceive how concepts join, moderately than treating each bit of information as remoted.
“Being one of many youngest folks within the lab is daunting,” Service provider says. “Nevertheless, I’m actually excited to study from engineers and researchers who’re working on the reducing fringe of the sphere.”
She says she is hoping to attend MIT or Stanford.
The way forward for IEEE
Service provider was launched to IEEE by Joe Jusai, former finance chair of the IEEE Orlando Section.
Her first private expertise with the group occurred in 2023 whereas she was conducting analysis for a science honest mission. She was engaged on a robotic arm that would choose up gadgets utilizing an electroencephalogram and Bluetooth. The mission was impressed by her grandmother, who suffers from mobility points and was wheelchair-bound.
“I stored seeing IEEE talked about in each regulation and normal I discovered,” Service provider says. When she discovered about an upcoming Orlando Part assembly, she requested her mom to take her.
On the assembly, a number of members offered their analysis. Service provider requested Masood Ejaz and Varadraj Gurupur—the chapter chair and cochair—if she may focus on her science honest mission.
“After presenting my work, IEEE shortly turned a group that has formed my understanding of what engineering can accomplish,” she says.
She felt on high of the world, she says, when she offered her paper about her CubeSat mission at IEEE SouthEastCon.
“It’s a type of experiences that basically adjustments you,” she says.
She is happy to grow to be an IEEE scholar member when she begins school, she says. She additionally has her sights set on being elected as its president sometime.
“I met Kathleen Kramer at one among my native IEEE occasions earlier than she was elected IEEE president, and we spoke about my work,” she says. “After she was elected, I noticed that I’d like to grow to be the president of IEEE sometime.
“I hope in the future that I can step into the identical sneakers as her and proceed to assist IEEE the identical approach it helped me.”
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