An easy-to-use system that enables farmers to reduce agricultural water waste through real-time data cleaned up at this year's Canadian Engineering Competition held at McGill University March 4-6.
Designed by five electrical and computer engineering students, Project Reservoir is an agricultural water control and environmental monitoring system consisting of low-cost field sensors which collect real-time soil and environmental conditions.
Ryan
Gibson, Austin
Cousineau,
Ian
Murray, Stuart
Alldritt
and Nicole
Project Reservoir is a recipient of funding from the Engineer of the Future Trust.
Second place in the Innovative Design Competition went to fourth-year Waterloo nanotechnology engineering students Wenbo Cui, Stuart Murray, Laura Bahlmann and Eric Beauregard for GraFET. The sensor uses a graphene based transistor and a dipole detection method to quickly detect toxic gases.
Waterloo teams capture additional top CEC prizes
First prize in the Junior Design Competition was won by second-year Waterloo mechatronics engineering students Colin Cooke, Mitchell Catoen, Michael Jonas, Jake Fisher. The competition involved building a single drawbridge which could span 50 cm, 75 cm and 100 cm gaps without any modifications.
Second place in the Senior Design Competition was awarded to third-year Waterloo mechatronics engineering students Wesley Fisher, Kenneth Geertsema, Daniel Lizewski and Eric Shi. The students were given 10 hours to design a robot to collect food packets and water for a village with obstacles along the way including sand, gravel, mountains and a river.
The two mechatronics engineering teams also placed first and second in the Ontario Engineering Competition that took place on Waterloo's campus at the end of January.