On Friday 6 October, three Mechanical Engineering students Ilyaas Ahmed, Edoardo Cardone and Michael Hedaux, became the Grand Champions of the 2017 Year 2 IMechE National Design Challenge held at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers HQ in Westminster. To win, the team had to design an autonomous vehicle to travel up to five metres to touch a wall and pause at two target positions on its return in order to gain points. These target positions were varied over three stages per competition heat.
Our team won the Greater London Region competition back in April. The team said: “This challenge enabled us to apply the theoretical knowledge gained in our degree to a real-life problem in a challenge that came with strict specifications.Having gone through the design process, we came across many issues that forced us to stretch our thinking and returned us to the drawing board on many occasions. However, we managed resources within the constraints whilst coherently working to ensure our device ticked all boxes, as we were determined to be a strong competition. We walked away with a wide range of key industry related skills throughout all elements of the challenge, particularly presenting our design methodology to members of the institution and guests from industry through the poster and verbal presentation. It is an honour to be crowned with such a prestigious award which will undoubtedly boost our employability. The overall experience has given us thirst for further involvement in the engineering field and will surely be unforgettable.” Judges included Carolyn Griffiths (IMechE president), representatives of industry, plus students and staff from universities across the UK.