Institution news
UAS Challenge
Engaging with aerospace students around the world, the UAS Challenge utilised Mashoom’s online platform took its awards ceremony online for the first time on 19 June. Teams from Brunel University, University of Twente and Queen’s University Belfast came away with awards for Safety, Innovation and Design respectively. Although, without the ‘fly off’ event, an overall winner was not found.
“We have seen some very promising and diverse designs and it is a great pity that we have not been able to see all the teams’ hard work reach the flying stage,” commented Lambert Dopping-Hepenstal, Head Judge for the UAS Challenge. “We hope that teams will have gained some valuable experience in reaching as far as the Critical Design Review, the point when the design is locked down for manufacture.”
Railway Challenge
A week later, the Railway Challenge awards ceremony was also held online for the first time. Now in its ninth successful year, 2020 saw 15 teams enter, including those from Poland and Germany, and competition for each award was fierce.
The Business Proposition category, a Dragon’s Den-style presentation event, was jointly won by teams from Poznań University of Technology and Network Rail. However, University of Huddersfield’s HudRail team scored exceptionally well across multiple events and were awarded for Best Design, Innovation and Best Technical Poster. Judge Rebeka Sellick from SellickRail congratulated the team, saying that they won “with a novel combination of mechanical spring and super-capacitors for energy recovery, making their case with robust references and good arguments setting out the carbon and cost benefits.”
Formula Student
Meanwhile, Formula Student took place entirely online, with more than 80 who took part in over 400 virtual presentations for the Business, Cost and Manufacturing and Design events. Despite the huge scale of the organisation involved, all these took place as planned with a small handful of very minor issues. “We are delighted at how everyone involved has adapted to the online format this year” said Lucy Killington, Project Manager for Formula Student.
The weekend’s traditional Dynamic Events were also taken online for the first time, with lap-time simulations using multi-body dynamics model and recreations of the courses used at Silverstone. Teams had the opportunity to test their driving abilities in online races using the Assetto Corsa simulation software, which were streamed online for teams and fans to enjoy.
Competitiveness remained high, with University of Bath, University of Surrey and Oxford Brookes University claiming awards for Overall Virtual Static Events winner, Overall Dynamic Events Winner and FS-AI Winner respectively.
Coming soon
Looking further to the future, the Institution is working with Autodesk to develop the 2021 Design Challenge. Tim Baker, Vice Chair of the Design Challenge commented, “Working with Autodesk is an exciting new opportunity, which will enable us to develop the Design Challenge, whilst not losing focus
Finally, the Apprentice Automation Challenge continues at pace, with the finals due to take place online in September, providing an opportunity for teams of apprentices to showcase their work from the past months.
Well done to everyone!
The Institution congratulates all those who have taken part in our competitions this year and looks forward to seeing all teams, volunteers, sponsors and judges again when the 2021 competitions start later this year.