A team of Lakehead University Engineering students have won a national design competition.

Third-year Mechanical Engineering student Graham Robertshaw explains he and three teammates faced plenty of challenges building a robot to launch ping-pong balls at targets.

“We were only given eight hours to, for some of us, learn how to use all the components in our design,” Robertshaw notes.

The team of Robertshaw Mechanical Engineering student Caleb Frisby, and Software Engineering students Zachary Kelly and Megan Eyben previously won Lakehead University’s engineering challenge, and came in second place at an Ontario-wide competition.

At the national level, they were challenged to build a device to launch the balls at targets of different heights, representing water bombs to put out fires in a miniature cardboard city.

Their design hit the all of the targets in the fewest tries, beating seven other teams from across the country.

Kelly says they learned a lot, pointing out that none of them had any experience with electrical engineering.

It was also an exercise in teamwork.

“It’s a multi-disciplinary team–we have Mechanical and Software [Engineering] on our team, so just working together trying to come up with a design that worked for everyone,”

Acting Chair of Software Engineering Dr. Rachid Benlamri says the award shows the strengths of Lakehead’s Engineering program, noting LU students usually place in the top five at these engineering competitions.

He tells us the problems they’re asked to solve also help them develop the creativity and skills they’ll need to succeed in today’s job market.