Engineering Innovation and Design

Engineering Innovation and Design (EID) is a programme that was initiated by NTU 8 years ago. It consists mainly of 2 parts. The first part consist of some one-week modules (kinda like crash course), where we learn about writing business plans, computer-aided design (on Solidworks) etc. For aerospace students, we learnt about computational fluid dynamics using Gambit and Fluent, and also about composite structures.

The second part, which I feel is the more interesting part, is building a marketeable prototype of some kind of useful machinery. There were 4 categories, and each group was placed in one: Design, Automation, Safety & Environment, and Assistive Technologies. And...

Yay!!! My group won 1st prize in the Design category!

So we get S$1400... but split between 13 people lah. Anyway, our prototype was a Badminton Shuttlecock Launcher, which we simply called "Launch IT" (and our fake company name, "Sportz Xcessorize". Like other groups, we could claim up to S$700 to buy necessary equipment etc. The machine consisted mainly of 2 parts: A lauching mechanism and a feeding mechanism.

It took us quite some time to come up with the launching mechanism. But the basic idea was that a spring and rod system attached to a rotating cam (driven by a motor) would undergo compress and release modes that will launch the shuttlecock placed in front of the plunging rod. The point of contact is the back portion of the shuttlecock head.

We didn't really know what to do for the feeding mechanism at first, but thanks to one of my groupmates Teck Chin, we had a fantastic feeding mechanism for our shuttlecock launcher--a robotic arm! It was a centre of attaction for our machine. Teck Chin was able to do it perfectly well because his URECA project was on something similar (that's good for him, don't think I learnt a lot in my URECA project. *shame shame*). Basically there's a feeding tube located somewhere where we load our shuttlecocks (can fill in at least 24 shuttlecocks), and the robotic arm grabs a shuttlecock out through the constriction and places it in front of the spring-rod. Good timing is necessary and this is done by sensors and microcontrollers.

All in all I think our prototype was really cool and some students couldn't believe we did this on own... most believe we outsourced it (coz that's how some groups did their stuff). The only stuff we "outsourced" was the stand (around 1m in height) that the launcher was placed on, the manufacturing of the cam (however, the cam design/profile was done by ourselves), and the motor (which was actually taken from an abandoned structure in one of the labs). Really wanna thank all my group members! I'm glad to have them as my new friends.

Oh, and there was a lot of media coverage today... Channel News Asia came to our booth (twice), there was Lianhe Zaobao etc. And since EID was featured on TV, we also had our teeny weeny seconds of fame (saw myself on TV... but less than 1sec though... lol). The reporter wanted to end her report by talking and returning the shots from our shuttlecock launcher at the same time... saw that on TV too, but in reality she NG like 10+ times (well, not her fault also lah, our machine had some slight problems, and there was some miscommunication between them and us). Really tough being a reporter/newscaster sometimes.

Here's some excerpts I got from channelnewsasia.com on our project (full report - here, will be gone in a few days):

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A mechanical innovation in five weeks, complete with a business plan to make sure it sells - that was the challenge to 600 Mechanical Engineering students at the Nanyang Technological University's (NTU) Engineering Innovation and Design Competition.
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Asst Professor David Lee Butler, School of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, Singapore Institute of Manufacting Tech, said: "This goes back to 1999 when we decided to give our students a chance to become technopreneurs.
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Now it's in the eighth year and we've had 5,000 students on the scheme. This year the quality is quite good, I'm quite happy. Some amazing ideas such as the fish scaling device and the shuttlecock launcher," said Mr Butler.

There is no limit to innovation and creativity.

An automated shuttlecock launcher, which can adjust the launching angle of shuttlecocks, came in tops in terms of design.

Currently there are no mechanical shuttlecock launchers in the market.

But this launcher can not only be produced at a low cost, but also help beginners execute different strokes.
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And to those who organised EID... great job! I honestly felt this is one of the better NTU initiatives. Keep up the good work!

Here's our group photo... all 13 of us:

Front (l-r): Wayne, Teck Chin, Kok Vui, Hongbin, Ke Yeng, Sihan, Vik, Tuck You.

Back (l-r): Jonathan, Fane, Sami, Chee Loong, Sze Fei (me).

Will upload more photos on this blog itself once I get my hands on them. This has been a real boost to my confidence after being slightly depressed these few days. Woohoo!