A team of undergraduate students from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) has been named a Top 3 Finalist in the prestigious IEEE EMC+SIPI Student Hardware Design Contest, earning international recognition for their innovative work in electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) engineering.
Competing under the name Team Watt-erloo, students Jake Peters, Alanna Rudolph, Amirbahador Mansoori, and Dhyey Bhatt advanced to the final round of the competition and will present their project at the IEEE International Symposium on Electromagnetic Compatibility, Signal & Power Integrity (EMC+SIPI) in Dallas, Texas.
Supervised by ECE adjunct professor, Dr. George Shaker, the team developed a project that characterizes the electromagnetic interference (EMI) generated by an Arduino-based robotic vehicle and validates targeted mitigation techniques to improve system performance and reliability.
Their work evaluates power integrity as well as radiated and conducted emissions through a combination of circuit simulation, physical probing, and automated measurements. As electronic systems become increasingly compact and interconnected, understanding and controlling electromagnetic interference is essential to ensuring devices operate safely, reliably, and without disrupting surrounding technologies.
What sets the project apart is the team's innovative approach to EMI measurement. The students designed an automated bimanual robotic scanning system equipped with closed-loop vision to perform near-field EMI mapping. Using ArUco markers to achieve millimetre-level precision, the robotic platform identifies and maps the exact sources of radiated emissions across a custom-designed printed circuit board.
As active members of the IEEE EMC Society Student Branch Chapter, the team drew inspiration from a shared interest in the role EMC plays across modern technology. From protecting aircraft electronics to ensuring the safe operation of life-critical biomedical devices, electromagnetic compatibility remains a critical consideration in an increasingly crowded electronic environment.
The IEEE EMC+SIPI Student Hardware Design Contest attracts teams from universities around the world and challenges students to design, build, test, and demonstrate hardware solutions to complex EMC problems. Advancing to the Top 3 places Team Watt-erloo among the strongest student teams internationally and reflects the technical skill, creativity, and dedication required to compete at this level.
For the students, the recognition is a validation of months of design, testing, troubleshooting, and refinement.
"We are incredibly excited to represent the University of Waterloo and our local IEEE EMC Society Student Branch Chapter," the team said. "We look forward to demonstrating our measurement systems and sharing our results with the international EMC community at the IEEE EMC+SIPI Symposium."
Congratulations Team Watt-erloo!