Engineering students from Bournemouth University secured a double success at the Wessex Regional stage of the Institute of Mechanical Engineering’s Design Challenge.
Third-Year Design Engineering students beat competition from Bournemouth and Poole College, University of Southampton and University of Portsmouth to come first in the Advanced Category.
A team of First-Year Mechanical Engineering students were also celebrating as they finished level on points with Bournemouth and Poole College at the top of the Foundation Category.
The competition was held at the Government’s Battlelab Innovation Centre in Wool.
All teams were set the challenge to create an autonomous robot and simulate an electric vehicle docking at a recharging station. They also needed to give a presentation about their prototype to a panel of experts in the industry.
“It felt really amazing when we found out we won, we were totally in awe!” said Julia Macdonald, from the Advanced team. “We had technical issues prior, but to our relief, they managed to resolve themselves as the competition started and we scored very highly in all aspects of the competition,” she added.
Julia’s team, called FrozeOhm, also included fellow students Alexander Peters, Joshua Yeadon and Thomas Sant. They built their robot on a budget of just £90 in Bournemouth University’s innovation centre.
To pass the challenge, their vehicle needed to drive to a target, then return to its starting point and drive to a second target before driving to the finishing point. At each target it needed to stop for ten to fifteen seconds, sound a buzzer and light an LED.
“We had chosen a colour sensor to identify the start and end locations, while other teams were basing the end location on guess work, so we definitely had the technical edge on them, even though it did make the programming a more difficult experience,” Julia explained.
In the Foundation Category, students Eleonora Dacaj, Erblina Aliu and Imogen Riorden competed under the team name Team BU Spare Tyre Squad. They finished level on points with Bournemouth and Poole College but the BPC team were declared overall winners as they won the challenge section of the competition.
FrozeOhm and Team Spare Tyre will both now head to London with their robots for the national finals.
“We are feeling confident in our robot, as we managed to score consistently,” Julia said. “However, we will be rebuilding the device with new components as we don't want to risk fatigue impacting our results. I think it will be a really great day out, full of sharing ideas and connecting with other people in the industry!”
The Design Challenge is run by the Institute of Mechanical Engineers to give students a taste of ‘real world’ engineering, challenging them to design, create and run a device to a strict technical specification.
