The Design Challenge 2021 National Final will be taking place on 8 October at One Birdcage Walk, London.

Design Challenge 2021 has tasked first- and second- year university student teams with 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.

Tim Baker, Professorial Teaching Fellow at University College London and Head of the Design Challenge Technical Committee emphasises this point by stating that: “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.”

Claire Lucas, Professor of Engineering, Teaching and Learning at King’s College London adds 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.”

We cannot wait to see all of the teams’ repeatable vehicles in action as they battle it out to win the Institution of Mechanical Engineers’ prestigious Design Challenge trophy. But before then, we would like to thank all teams, academic leads and our industry partners for their hard work in making this year’s competition cycle a success and wish the competing finalists the best of luck with their preparations ahead of the Design Challenge 2021 National Final.