First year engineering students at the University’s School of Engineering and Digital Arts(EDA) took part in the robotics competition via videoconference with colleagues from the Université Paris X Nanterre.
The race against time was piloted last year when the Paris team won. This time a team headed by senior lecturer Dr Richard Guest, Professor John Batchelor and lecturer Dr Konstantinos Sirlantzis were winners.
The best engineering students use their acquired electronic skills to build the robots. Each side produced seven which were designed to follow two race tracks. On one track the robot had to identify and follow a route and on the second it had to find short cuts and prevent a collision with obstacles. Kent’s robots were better at following instructions and negotiating the tracks.
The head-to-head robotics challenge, which is funded by the Science Faculty Internationalisation Fund, allows the Kent engineering students to interact with their French colleagues, to exchange ideas and to work towards their future research.