element14 Community Announces Winners of Sixth Sense Design Challenge
Community members leveraged the STMicroelectronics Sensor Tile and TE Connectivity Component Pack to create autonomous vehicles
element14.com, the community for engineers, has announced the winners of its “Sixth Sense” Design Challenge. As one of five challenges the element14 Community runs each year, element14 encouraged its members to create a small, remotely-operated or autonomous vehicle, leveraging the powerful processing capabilities of STMicroelectronics and TE Connectivity products to improve remote vehicle sensing and data collection.
The element14 Community team of judges selected a Grand Prize and Runner Up winner for the design challenge:
- Grand Prize – Douglas Wong, Canada – Douglas created GraffitiBot, a fully autonomous ground vehicle capable of printing graphics on the surface it traverses and producing a liquid canvas drawing. Although the GraffitiBot itself might be small, the scope of the project was anything but, incorporating mechanical, electronics, software and hydraulic design.
- Runner Up – Rod B, UK – Rod created a robot to help those working in construction by hauling heavy materials such as sand or gravel. To achieve this, Rod made his own PCB to host the TE Magnet sensor so that it would be board-mountable, showing an inventive way of using the required technology. This was Rod’s first ever element14 design challenge.
Through detailed blog posts, the challengers made all of their build steps and code open source, so other element14 Community members can learn from these designs and replicate projects on their own.
“As the Development Distributor, we are committed to being a champion for makers and are proud to help drive innovation for our 600,000-plus member community,” said Dianne Kibbey, Global Head of Community and Social Media for the element14 Community. “As always, we were very impressed by the creativity and innovative spirit our community demonstrated with this challenge and are looking forward to offering more opportunities for our members to push the boundaries of electronic design.”
The element14 Community is part of Premier Farnell, the development distributor, which helps design engineers, maintenance and test engineers, makers, parents, and teachers develop the future generation of coders and products that apply technology to change our world for the better.
To learn more about element14 design challenges and the community’s commitment to drive innovation and champion makers, visit: https://www.element14.com/community/community/design-challenges
Farnell Global is a fast and reliable distributor of products and technology for electronic and industrial system design, maintenance and repair. From research and design through prototype to production, Farnell helps its customers access the products and services they need 24/7. With more than 80 years of experience, 47 localised websites, and a dedicated team of over 3,500 employees, Farnell provides every component its customers need to build the technology of tomorrow.
Farnell Global trades as Farnell in Europe, Newark in North America, and element14 in Asia Pacific. It also sells direct to consumers through its CPC business in the UK.
Farnell Global has been part of the established global technology distributor, Avnet (Nasdaq: AVT), since 2016. Today, this relationship allows the company to support its customers at every stage of the product life cycle, offering a truly unique distribution model, as well as expertise in end-to-end delivery and product design.
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