Boeing to sponsor '04 ASME Student Design Contest final competition


The large number of armed land mines, which remain in place around the globe as remnants of past wars, are a major concern to most nations. ASME student members from each of ASME's 12 U.S. regions and those in Region 13, ASME's international region, have been working to come up with techniques to remove these weapons safely.

The best design entries from each region will compete against each other at this year's Student Design Contest during the ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress, next month in Anaheim, Calif. The competition will be held on Sunday, Nov. 14 at 1 p.m.

The Student Design Contest is being organized by the Council on Engineering and the Council on Member Affairs. It is being sponsored by the Boeing Co.

The goal of this year's challenge, dubbed "Mine Madness," is to generate novel devices that will facilitate the humanitarian efforts that are underway to locate and disarm these dangerous mechanisms that were designed to cause great physical harm. According to the United Nations, 50 million land mines are buried and active in nearly 70 countries throughout the world, and thousands of people are injured or killed every year.

The regional student teams were given the task of designing, building and demonstrating a vehicle that will navigate over or around several obstacles and retrieve six simulated mines from a minefield and place them into a controlled receiving area within a three-minute time frame. Each simulated mine is given a weighted value depending on the difficulty of retrieval. The team with the highest value of mines retrieved is the winner.

ASME and Boeing recently announced an alliance that will foster programs and activities of mutual interests, including the areas of technical information exchange at conferences, continuing education and career development, and public advocacy.

"This contest presents an outstanding opportunity for future engineers to experience real-life problem solving, while gaining important design, production and teamwork skills that will benefit their future employment," said Andy Bicos, the Boeing Co.'s ASME liaison.

Universities and institutes representing this year's international finalists include the University of Alabama, Carnegie Mellon University, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, LeTourneau University, New Jersey Institute of Technology, University of New Mexico, North Carolina State University, Oregon State University, Santa Clara University, Southern Illinois University, University of Vermont, Villanova University, and Western Kentucky University.

For more information about the 2004 ASME Student Design Contest, visit the Student Center on ASME.ORG, www.asme.org/students, or contact Tom Wendt at (847) 680-5493.

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