IET Midlands Power Group’s project evening success

The Midlands Power Group is a specialist section of the IET in the UK Midlands region, allowing members interested in power subjects to meet with each other, hear about new developments and to discuss mutual challenges and interests. Last month’s engineering project evening at Coventry University, UK, was one such event, meeting all of the expectations of its organisers.

The evening event provided an opportunity to meet engineering students from universities across the region and to have a look at their projects. Organised by the Midlands Power Group together with the Department of Aerospace Electrical and Electrical Engineering at Coventry University, the event proved a great success. During the evening a number of guests, representing a wide cross-section of industry, commerce and academia, were given a fascinating insight into the diversity of engineering specialisms and research being undertaken within the universities of Birmingham, Coventry and Warwick in the following areas:

• Aerospace: autonomous quadrocopter, moon-orbiting satellite, real-time control of helicopter rig, rapid prototyping processes.
• Communications: android controlled system, reconfigurable antennas, security system and tracking.
• Electrical engineering: distributed fault detection, harmonic analysis.
• Robotics and control: hexapod, robotic cells, torque control, self-balancing robotic vehicle, swarm robots.
• Transport: railway transportation, driving style and energy consumption.

Prizes were awarded as follows:

• IET Technological Innovation prize awarded to Elizabeth Ace for her project ‘A European moon-orbiting satellite.
• IET Sustainability and the Environment went to Baljit Bhogal for ‘Improving the efficiency of ventilation systems’.
• Converteam awarded to Mani Entezami for ‘Distributed fault detection and diagnosis for wind farms’
• Alstom Grid went to Jeremy Boyd for his project ‘System for comparing the effects of driving style and energy consumption and ride comfort in trains’.

Feedback

‘What an excellent event! The quality of the material on presentation was extremely high and all the young undergrads were a delight to talk with and listen to. Well done IET for taking the initiative in setting up such an event, please continue to do so.’

‘This was an excellent opportunity for students to explain their work to engineers outside their specialist field. A critical skill required in the workplace.’