News, Science & Technology

UW Engineers Take Top Prizes at the 2016 Ontario Engineering Competition

On the weekend of January 29th to 31st, the Engineering 5 building may not have had any classes running, but it was far from abandoned. Students flocked from far and wide (or at least, from sixteen universities across Ontario) to participate in the 37th annual Ontario Engineering Competition, which the University of Waterloo was happy to host this year. The event brings students together to compete in the areas of innovation, design, and communication.

The Ontario Engineering Competition has seven different categories of competition, which are: Junior Design, Senior Design, Parliamentary Debates, Engineering Communication, Innovative Design, Programming, and Consulting. University of Waterloo teams took home prizes in five of the seven competitions!

In the Junior and Senior Design competitions, teams must create an innovative solution to a previously undisclosed design problem and build a working prototype, all within the given time limit and budget constraints. Waterloo engineers won first place in the Junior Design category and second place in Senior Design!

For the Innovative Design category, teams present their novel engineering solutions, which were developed prior to the competition, to the panel of judges. University of Waterloo students earned both the first and second prize spots in this category!

In the Parliamentary Debate competition, Waterloo students Ambika Opal and Graham Bleaney came in third place. This competition requires students to defend or refute a previously undisclosed subject in the style of parliamentary debates.

Congratulations to all of the teams, and good luck to those participating in the 2016 Canadian Engineering Competition!

Junior Design, First place: Jackson Fisher, Colin Cooke, Michael Jonas, Mitchell Catoen (2A MTE)

“The Junior Design problem was to design a watercraft to carry ballast 2 meters across a pool of water, using only a limited selection of materials. The scoring was based on speed (how fast you could cross the pool), and ballast (how much weight you could carry). The solution was designed, constructed, and reported on in a time span of under 6 hours. The key challenges for this design were creating a light, fast, and dry boat while using materials very unsuited for the task (popsicle sticks, duct tape, saran wrap)”

Senior Design, Second place: Eric Shi, Kenneth Geertsema, Wesley Fisher, Daniel Lizewski (3B MTE)

“The Senior Design problem was to build a robot that can infiltrate a base. The twist was, the base had moving walls of different shapes that the robot must avoid. At the same time, the robot must be able to deactivate sensors on the walls by reaching targets to short out wires at different locations on the wall. There was a total of 6 hours for design, construction, and preparation for a presentation.

“Our solution featured a robotic arm that can retract into a small form to avoid obstacles and extend to deactivate sensors on the fly. One of the major challenges we encountered was when one of our motors had some of its gears stripped from testing, making the system more difficult to control.”

Innovative Design, First place: Ryan Gibson, Stuart Alldritt, Austin Cousineau, Nicole Jiang, Ian Murray (4B EE / 4B CE)

“Project Reservoir is an end to end agricultural water control and environmental monitoring system. It consists of low cost, distributed soil sensors that collect soil moisture, soil temperature, air humidity, air temperature, altitude and acceleration. These sensors report back to the base station, which is responsible for collecting all sensor data, as well as controlling the whole irrigation system of the farm. All data collected is displayed and analyzed by our custom server side software, allowing detailed review of all farm conditions, as well as control of irrigation of the farm. Using this cohesive mix of technologies, the aim of Project Reservoir is to allow greater insights into the farm as well as to enable reduced water usage on the farm as wasted water is minimized through the detailed monitoring of soil conditions.”

Innovative Design, Second place: Eric Beauregard, Stuart Murray, Wenbo Cui, Laura Bahlmann (4B NE)

“GraFET: Graphene Based Nano-Electronic Harmful Gas Sensor.

“With urban and industrial development at an all-time high, it is more important now than ever to monitor exposure to toxic gases. GraFET is a sensor that uses a graphene based field-effect-transistor and a dipole detection method to achieve both rapid and sensitive detection of chemical vapour molecules. With a sensing element smaller than the size of an HDTV pixel, GraFET is capable of being incorporated into smartphones or wearable electronics. Apart from providing personal exposure levels, individual devices could communicate with each other to create the first dynamic high resolution air quality map of our cities. The applications of such a technology are wide-ranging and will revolutionize how air quality is monitored. GraFET: the power for pollution change in the palm of your hand.”

Leave a Reply