Prizes for Robotics undergraduates

Rapid was delighted to recognise the achievement of Robotics students at the University of Kent's recent prize-giving and graduation ceremony. The company sponsors a number of prizes for Kent undergraduates, and Rapid's Education Business Development Manager Edward Keith attended the event at the University's School of Engineering and Digital Arts.

The Rapid Electronics Prize for 1st Year Robotics Competition was awarded to Connor Meringolo. Connor won for the robot he designed as part of his robotics module, which earned him a place in the Cross Channel Robot Competition, an annual event which sees the University of Kent take on teams from a French university in a series of head-to-head robotics challenges. This year's competition was held at Ville d’Avray Institute of Technology, and tested skills such as speed, line following and object avoidance. Three Kent teams took on 14 from the French university.

"We didn't get to see the actual course until the day of the competition so it was a real challenge," said Connor (pictured left, with Edward Keith). "There were three tracks which increased in complexity. The robot I designed also had to take shortcuts and perform 360 spins depending on the course, and we had to adapt the robot with analogue and IR sensors. I had to design a PCB and I found that this aspect really helped with transferring what I knew theoretically into the practical sense. It also helped with our software skills because we could make our robots as difficult or as advanced as we wanted, pushing the bounds of what we know.

"Competitions like this really complement my studies because they show what we can do as engineers and how we can create something out of nothing. I am even more interested in pursuing robotics as a career after university," said Connor.

Connor's robot was the only one to complete the challenge without malfunction, while Henry Webb won Rapid's Cross Channel Robot Competition Prize as the robot that recorded the fastest time.

1st prize in the Rapid Electronics Undergraduate 2nd year Group Project Prize was awarded to Marie Joseph Jaques, Samuel Leo, Elijah Gould, James Keith Collett and Joseph Agustus Jamin Noel. 2nd Prize was jointly awarded to Hannah Rehema Mwebeiha, Niklas Glass, Edwin Sylvester Alexis Semakula, Arxhent Muja, Camilla Felici, Julija Makarovaite, Ahmad Saad Mohammed Aljundi and Vanessa Ifeanyi Okoh.