This is the ideas thread for our end of year engineering competition. If you have any ideas, please submit them with as much detail as possible. Keep in mind that the challenge has to be practical to stage; full-sized RC cars would be uber cool but logistically near impossible and expensive.

We will pick two teams more or less at random, making sure that skills are evenly distributed.

Later in the year, we will analyse all the ideas and pick the 4 most popular & practical ones, then draw on at random at the start of the build period.

My first two ideas are medieval siege weapons (based on the 'Golden Arrow' special episode, where teams had to launch a standard sized projectile and hit targets at various ranges)

EV drag race, as long as the EV is small enough to be transported easily.

Just a word of caution with the siege engines, I played with Jason's quite small torsion catapult once and the ratchet mechanism let go while I was winding it, smashing the handle into my hand 5times before I could move it out of the way, no broken bones but huge (black:O) bruising. I'm not sure i'd trust my self to make something which stores so much energy.

My suggestions are search and retrieval, such as navigating around an unfamiliar terrain with a camera for guidance, perhaps an amphibious challenge or even UAV. Will stick in other ideas when im back from getting lunch.
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The fabled EV challenge. Electric cart, limited battery power, most laps in a set time (30 mins)
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Aquatic challenges usually end up a bit large - whatever gets built, it should be transportable in a van or wagon.

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Originally posted by Nick:
Aquatic challenges usually end up a bit large - whatever gets built, it should be transportable in a van or wagon.

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hovercraft
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List of all the scrapheap challenges

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Scrapheap_Challenge_episodes

I've seen a great many of them. Ideas not already mentioned that I think possible and fun;

Land yacht
Mini sub/torpedo (I may be confusing these episodes.)
Egg shooter
Bomb disposal
Spy Car
Suitcase car


Own ideas;
Behemoth bottle rockets
Wind Turbine challenge (similar to windmill challenge, but generate electricity not grind coffee)
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Bomb disposal? Where did the "not uber dangerous" criteria go? The other options are all great, althought I don't know where we would find space for the land yachts - that airport near Jeff's place is still in use.

Giant bottle rockets is excellent - perhaps we can make that a smaller mid-year challenge? With the amount of diet coke I drink, I am definitely going to win that one.

Never saw the egg shooter episode, what's the detail?

quote:

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Originally posted by Nick:
Bomb disposal? Where did the "not uber dangerous" criteria go? The other options are all great, althought I don't know where we would find space for the land yachts - that airport near Jeff's place is still in use.

Giant bottle rockets is excellent - perhaps we can make that a smaller mid-year challenge? With the amount of diet coke I drink, I am definitely going to win that one.

Never saw the egg shooter episode, what's the detail?

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some ideas -

1) nar karting - 2 foot x 2 wheelbase, 3 or more wheels and has to be electric i think are the only rules.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKGb-Y85uNA

2 )some kind of pumpkin chunkin contest wouldnt be half bad either. at least that one is fairly open ended with regard to how you hurl the pumpkin. should be fairly good with regard to variety.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1Zf5i56HmM - not quite to that scale possibly
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I was thinking of Nar Karts when I suggested EV drag races. IMHO Nar karts were fun but they looked like they needed specialist parts in order to not suck and fit in the space. By taking off the size constraint, we can use more car parts and general junk.

Anything involving pumpkins has to be a winner!

Going back a few posts to the torpedo suggestion - that could work well if both teams had access to a pool.

pumpkin chucking is sounding good to me.
land yachts etc are probably all a bit too big.

What kind of budget are we thinking here, regardless of how much we can scavange theres going to be a fair bit of out of pocket if we want them not to suck. The scrapheap from the show was "seeded" with all the good bits the teams wanted keep in mind.
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The pumpkin contest already sounds a bit out of reach for some, unless they're really small pumpkins. Narkarts could be ok, the right kind of fanmotors from PnP at 36v could work pretty darn well...

Another random environment based challenge, navigate something down a 40M or something drop to a finish point, fastest time wins.
Much harder, navigate something UP said drop... ;.;
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The budget should be small but at the discretion of each team; with 4 to 6 people on each team, people can choose to kick in some money or find useful junk for free. One of the criteria for picking the challenge will be the ability to build it mostly from junk - no hi-tech robots, brushless motors or titanium (that rules my spare-parts bin right out ).

I mentioned this at work today and there was a real level of interest - everyone who fancied they could use a welder was interested. Perhaps we could allow a small number of associates so that we could form 3 or 4 teams rather than just two. I'm not sure how that would work out, but its worth discussing.

The pumpkin thing should probably not allow compressed gas, or the whole thing will become a wanking contest to see who has *ahem* the longer barrel. other than that it has a lot of scope for fun - its definitely on the short list.

Another variation on this from season 10 is the tennis ball cannon - you get a set number of balls to take out still and moving targets. Similar machines, smaller scale, might be cheaper & quicker to make.

The challenge should have a format where everybody gets involved - IE if its a vehicle event, it should have a driver change-over every lap so everyone is involved.

Yeah, just on the compressed gas/expanding gas situation. Basically you can't shoot a projectile using them. Big no no.

I would suggest a fixed budget IMO. Just like the cannon situation, it will come down to who has bigger barrel or in this case deeper pockets.

Hence it becomes more of a 'scrapheap' challenge.

Agree on the participation aspect, where possible.
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