WEC2020

WEC is the Western Engineering Competition by The Western Engineering Student Societies, which encompasses large competitions from qualifying teams from each University in western Canada. Each team has won a competition at their University to compete. After my team (Daniel Burleson, Luke Evans, and Robert Lee) and I qualified in the Senior Design competition at UVIC, we moved on to WEC 2020 in Saskatoon, Canada. Senior Design is the most competitive of the categories where 13 teams across western Canada are given a practical problem, limited supplies, and 6 hours to develop an often mechatronic solution and associated presentation. All teams are first made aware of the competition problem at the start of the 6 hours.

This particular year we had to build a robot for collecting a series of cans in a confined space with limited access to which no human could enter. Each random and uniform can then have to have then its contents identified without opening. An extra ball was added to complicate other things, which could not exit the arena without a point deduction. We were also marked by the lowest metal weight solution and lowest "cost" solution based on the store of provided supplies. Our solution used only free cardboard for framing and two simple wheels. Our final solution was the only one to collect all cans without pushing the ball out of the arena, with the lowest cost and weight.

I cannot express how impressed and proud of my team I was during the competition. We were highly focused, precise in our communications, and collaborative.