The American Society of Mechanical Engineers, ASME is a non-profit organization which globally promotes art, science and multidisciplinary mechanics and engineering, and other related disciplines. ASME’s main mission is to encourage and help all those practicing engineering for the greater good.

One of its initiatives is the ASME Student Design Competition, which is organized every year with the objective of creating a platform from which students in ASME associated centers may fulfill all their potential, encouraging their initiative and ability to innovate. With this in mind, every year a new challenge or problem is presented for which those students, preferably working in teams, are to find a viable and efficient solution.

They are to design, construct and be able to operate a prototype carrying out an activity related to the challenge at hand. The challenge for the 2009 edition, the deadline for which passed in February, consisted in designing a vehicle for a mission to Mars. Regional winners will be announced on June 30th 2009 and will go on to compete in the international phase of the competition. Winning projects of these two phases will be exhibited at the 2009 ASME Student Professional Development Conference, taking place in November 2009 in Florida.

The challenge for the 2010 edition has already been launched with the title EARTH SAVER: Autonomous Material Sorter. The idea is to design, construct and test an autonomous system capable of classifying and storing typically recyclable materials such as metal, plastic and glass in separate, highly sensitive containers.

Cash prizes for the local phase go from 500 dollars for the first prize to 150 dollars for third place. In the final, the winner of the first prize will receive up to 4,000 dollars. Finalists will also have their expenses paid to assist the final.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, 23 de June de 2009 at 12:37 am and is filed under Challenges. You can track comments on this feed RSS 2.0. You can leave a comment or trackback from your own site.