Robotics challenges can be tough, but quite enjoyable when there is a competition at stake. During a multiple day hackathon, ten teams competed for victory in a robotics challenge. Education lead Astrid van der Niet: “It is important to bring talent together. The greatest things are born under time pressure. The multidisciplinary teams consisted of students from Delft University of Technology, The Hague University of Applied Sciences and Inholland University of Applied Sciences. We wanted them to resolve a challenge related to renewable energy. Wind turbine blade inspection is a complex challenge that connects many partners. We’re tackling a key question: how can a robot perform accurate inspections on a vertical windmill blade?”
Demo day
The last day was demo day at SAM XL, offering a wide variety of robots . Six-armed robots with suction cups, robots with a flexible skirt and suction power provided by a vacuum cleaner, robots with swinging arms, and caterpillars that crawled up walls. In the end, one team succeeded in climbing the wind turbine blade from bottom to top independently: Team Windies. They won the grand prize . Second place went to team V4, who excelled in image recognition and had correctly classified all the damage to the blade.
Endurance wins
Education and Research Technician Menno Verkade was one of the jurors. “The assignment was quite tough and challenging. It was difficult to create a functional robot. I was proud to see all the students persevere, no matter what setback they encountered. This hackathon represents the essence of our work on a small scale. Aiming to find solutions, keeping the experiments going and learning along the way. And having fun along the way!”
Thank you Delft Robotics Student Association (RSA) for organising this event together with Astrid and Menno. It will definitely boost RSA’s mission: Bringing robotics enthusiasts of Delft together.
Special thanks to Edwin Kanters for presenting the assignment and participating in the jury and all the volunteers that converted the tinkering event into a success.
