UTRAHacks 2023 took place from March 18-19, 2023. The overnight robotics hackathon drew in the participation of 26 teams and consisted of two challenges.
- Autonomous vehicle challenge: Build and program a vehicle to complete obstacle courses using teleoperation and autonomous navigation.
- Open-ended design problem: Come up with and address a pervasive/serious real-world problem using robotics.
Second-year ChemE students Kalliroi Alikakos, Kate Bowen, and Pasindu Perera took home 2nd-place for the open-ended design problem. Rounding out their team was Noah Selda, an undergrad student from MIE.
“Our team chose to address recycling. Canada produces the most consumer waste in the world and a lot of recyclable waste goes unrecycled. We were greatly inspired by our CHE230 – Environmental Chemistry course when selecting this issue. Our design was a simplified proof-of-concept sorting robot that could distinguish between most paper and plastic products. In the spirit of recycling, our design was built almost entirely from discarded food packaging from the event,” says Pasindu.
UTRAHacks fosters creativity and innovation, and cultivates science and technology leaders of the future by providing students with the opportunities to design and build advanced robotic technologies.