A Challenge, a Concorde and a Mystical Magnetic Field - Part 4

That's me on the right with a terrible hairstyle.

It has been a while since the last post, and let me tell you, it has been an eventful while, not least the fact that I had my exams during that period, for which I started revising far too late, but enough with the formalities and lets conclude the epic tale of the Toyota Technology Challenge.

So, after our 8 hour “make it work” session, as described in part 3, we were on the way once again the next morning in our supervising teacher’s cramped mini-cooper to Derbyshire; a 2 hour drive from London. The systems engineer, the chief designer and myself, the team manager, were apprehensive of our chances, but at the same time, thinking through the various situations that could occur at the nationals.

On the way, we stopped at a service station, where my teacher and I devoured a hamburger, to the disgust of my team. Just thought I should include that for some reason.

We arrived and set up shop. Looking around, every other team there seemed to have prepared themselves very well! They had key chains, posters, display boards and even branded gifts for the other teams. Our table had our buggy, a sheet of plastic, repair kits, soldering irons and at least 3 laptops. We dubbed it the engineer’s table, but when I noticed a judge looking at the tables and making thorough notes, I quickly became nervous.

A Challenge, a Concorde and a Mystical Magnetic Field - Part 3

As I said in my previous post of this series, we had miraculously made it through to the National Finals, despite our car being made out of an unsustainable material and not even navigating the course properly at the Regionals! We were truly surprised at the result, but still aware of the challenges that faced us.

On the ride back to the school inside my teacher’s cramped black Mini Cooper, we discussed various things that we would have to do within the 27 days before the Nationals: we would have to rewrite our presentation according to the judges advice, rebuild the entire buggy out of a more sustainable material and design an entirely new algorithm to even stand a chance of winning the Nationals. We were representing the South East of England, and we wanted to at least achieve a respectable ranking!

Following a day of chit-chat, discussing the various things that had to be done, we consulted a few technology teachers as to what material would be best to use and could be assembled into a buggy quickly enough. All signs were pointing towards aluminium, being an infinitely recyclable material, but I was sceptical about the timescale it would take to build this, especially considering that it took us two and a half weeks to assemble a laser-cut case. The aluminium would need to be drilled, cut and sanded to precise specifications and then assembled with nuts and bolts.

A challenge, a Concorde and a Mystical Magnetic Field - Part 2

A few weeks ago I wrote a post chronicling the journey to the regional finals of the Toyota Technology Challenge (TTC). Following a relatively simple German internal exam and a slightly controversial post for Collatyral Damage over the course of this past week, I am now able to continue my telling of this perilous journey through the TTC.

If I am totally honest, the journey was indeed perilous, as I shall explain shortly.

So, we had a functioning buggy and a fairly decent algorithm ready to go. We thought we stood a fairly good chance at winning the regional finals on the Monday following the Friday after school testing session I mentioned earlier. We enjoyed a fairly relaxed weekend and on Monday, gathered all our stuff, including some potent superglue, a tool kit, a wire spool, two laptops, two types of tape, a spare microcontroller and everything else we thought we would need if the worse came to worse.

At 10:35am we were off on the way to the Duxford Imperial War Museum, squashed within my teacher’s Mini Cooper on a (perilous) 2 hour drive out of London. See the peril in that?

Anyway, we arrived and clambered out of the compact car, in uniform and the rest, marching into the museum with our modest red project tray, greeted by the museum manager and a representative from Toyota. We were shown our respective table, underneath the wing of the BA Concord, and instructed to set up. Perplexed by this instruction, we observed other teams walking in with an arsenal of posters, demonstration vehicles and pin-up boards, and asked ourselves whether we should have done the same. After some discussion, we concluded that I was a much better idea to get the buggy working first than waste time on articles the judges did not even look at.