Thirty teams from fifteen university teams have been confirmed for the 2021 Design Challenge.

The full list of universities taking part in the 2021 Design Challenge is available on the Challenge website. First- and second- year student teams will undertake the task of designing and building a repeatable vehicle which represents the first stages of a robotic vehicle that could be used for materials handling purposes. This will help develop the participants’ practical skills and enable them to gain valuable experience of working on a real-world project in the process.

“The Design Challenge is a fantastic opportunity for students taking part, as it teaches them all the skills that they are going to need when they get into the workplace. Starting from a concept, from a clean sheet, to develop that through analysis and simulation with all of the engineering science that they’ve learned and applying that to a working product, and then to test it and take it to a competition” commented Tim Baker, Professorial Teaching Fellow at University College London and Head of the Technical Committee of the Design Challenge. Mercedes AMG High Performance Powertrains’ Head of Mechanical Engineering and Design Challenge Steering Committee Chair Ben Hodgkinson adds that “The Design Challenge is directly analogous to motorsport and Formula 1. Engineers are given a set of rules where they must use their ingenuity and skill to design and create a better solution than their competitors, these will then compete on ‘race day’. The rules and budget are different, but the essence is identical.”

Claire Lucas, Professor of Engineering, Teaching and Learning at King’s College London highlights that “The Design Challenge is vital for engineering students. It gives them an authentic problem to solve and lets them showcase their skills to employers and to other students. The Institution have done a great job of adding more simulation to these projects so that students can improve their skills in that area, which we think is really important.”

All participants are encouraged to follow the Design Challenge’s Twitter and Facebook social media channels and Challenge website for competition updates, and we wish all first- and second-year teams the best of luck with their projects.