The team from Kaunas University of Technology (KTU) has won the finals of European BEST Engineering Competition (EBEC), which is being organised by the Board of European Students of Technology (BEST) every year. Lithuanian team, which won at the Team Design category, were representing the Baltic region.
“It was the last time we could take part in this competition, because we have graduated this year. We have been participating in EBEC for four years in a row, what we loved about this competition most of all was interesting tasks”, said the winners.
Lukas Venčkauskas (graduated from Master’s at the Faculty of Civil Engineering and Architecture), Naglis Ausmanas (Mechanical Engineering and Design), Dainius Stankevičius and Marius Gailius (Electrical and Electronics Engineering, and also employees of the Institute of Biomedical Engineering) hope to use the skills and experience gained working together as a team, not only in competitions, but also in work projects.
Caution: Fragile
Each team of the participants had to solve two tasks. The first task in Team Design category was to design a system for packing fragile goods. They needed to construct the automatic conveyor system, which would take a box from the warehouse, would bend it, glue it and fill it with expanded polystyrene foam, and would leave the box in the warehouse ready for dispatching. A fragile cargo was represented by an egg.
“This was a really challenging task. Only 3 teams out of 15 could pack at least one box, and only one of those boxes has survived a free-falling test saving the egg”, told Stankevičius, member of the winning team.
The second task required constructing a system, which would dig up a mine, move it into the neutral zone and defuse it. The mines were also eggs and to defuse them meant expelling their insides without crushing the shell. Both tasks needed to be accomplished with things from the local shop bought for virtual credits; there were both limited supply of things for acquisition, and of the credits.
Great team-working experience
Stankevičius believes that the student engineering competition is the best place to learn how to work as a team and how to manage stress: “Each member of our team is responsible for a certain field, but every one of them knows all. Therefore, when a problem arises, anyone can make a decision. We become a better team with each competition, and that’s the greatest benefit of it”.
According to him, engineering competition EBEC is a good way to identify which universities prepare the best and the most skilful engineers.
“We showed, what we are worth of”, said the KTU graduate Stankevičius, who also works at the KTU’s Institute of Biomedical Engineering.
EBEC is an engineering competition for students organised by students. It has several stages: the teams who win in national and regional competitions meet in the European finals, which is organised in August every year. In Lithuania these competitions have been taking place for 11 years.
This year the EBEC finals took place in Belgrade, Serbia. The creative engineering tasks were being solved by 15 best teams form European technological universities.
