Forging Your Innovation Into Results: A Guide To Excelling and Winning Engineering Competitions
If done right, engineering competitions can be one of the biggest college resume boosters and just an overall heck of fun. Joining these competitions can allow people to truly let all of the creativity out of them into their creation of what they bring into the world. However, the fun isn’t just about making the machine or completing the objective - it is coming out victorious on top of everyone else. That is why you are here, which is what this blog will discuss today. Not only will we dive into the characteristics of what you and your team need to have/do to win, but we will also be going over popular engineering competitions in the STEM field, and how you can sign up for them today!
Step-by-step Guide On How To Build and Run Your Team To Victory
Building and running a team is no easy feat - especially for those who want to win. Engineering competitions are highly competitive these days, meaning all of them will require hours upon hours of work and dedication to get good results. Hence, this blog has compiled eight essential key features every team should have and/or do while competing if they want to win. Trust me - as a person who has competed in multiple engineering competitions, this list is highly critical to even standing a chance.
Make sure to comment down below what engineering competitions are going to participate in!
1. Understanding Rules and Criteria
First and foremost is understanding the rules and criteria. In engineering competitions, you would find that there are a lot of rules that can get confusing fast, but all words count no matter how small the font is - just like a contract! For example, in FIRST robotics competitions, they have a huge rulebook on tiny specific things that can be the difference between victory and loss. Not only do rules lay a foundation for the success of your team, but they also lay a foundation for the overall efficiency and legitimacy of the competition itself.
2. Building a Strong Team
This may seem like a no-brainer, but it is really important to create a strong team so that you and your fellow teammates can rely on one another. When things get tough and stressful, these are the people that you are going to be around - so think if they would either contribute to finding a solution or become more of a problem. When building a team, it is good to divide it into separate parts, if needed (this allows for more efficiency, as everyone knows what they are doing). While every engineering competition is different, there is a general “default team split” that may be useful for maximizing your efficiency.
Take a look at the breakup below:
Engineers (Should be about 60% of the team)
Programmers (Should be about 30% of the team)
Social Media/Misc jobs (Should be about 10% of the team)
3. Strategic Planning
Strategic planning is very important - you simply can’t be spontaneous in engineering competitions, its too hard to do that. This type of activity requires a consistent and effective team + design to work, so this step is one of the most important out of all eight. To build and effective solution to whatever problem you are facing, it's important to have a well-detailed plan on what to do and how you can achieve it.
Many engineers use modeling software such as Fusion 360 or Blender. Some are free, and some cost money - it ends up being how big of a budget your team has to organize the most effective plan. Click the links above to learn more about them to help out your team!
Creating a strategic plan should not just be the engineer's job, but also the job of the programmers. The programmers should be able to tell the engineers what actual components they need for their code to function. This is why communication also is a big factor in engineering competitions, but we will take a look at that later.
4. Research a Specific Field
Researching can be one of the most useful tools for winning an engineering competition because it gives you more information on what you are creating. To combat a problem, one needs to be educated in the field - which kind of aligns with this famous quote: “To defeat your enemy, one must know your enemy”.
For engineers to effectively combat a problem, they need an in-depth understanding of what the actual problem is, and how it is caused in the first place. There is no point in trying to fix a problem when you can’t effectively target the source of it in the first place. Research is a step that is most often overlooked - but those who don’t get a massive advantage.
5. Attention to Detail
Paying attention to detail is highly critical for everything in all engineering competitions there are. It is important for team members to frequently check each other’s work quality to ensure that there are no slip-ups because in the end you simply just can’t afford them.
Think about this - in coding a single character can make the difference between success and failure. In engineering - one forgotten nut or one misrouted wire could make the difference between the machine working and the machine exploding. It is, really, important to pay attention to every little detail in all aspects of the team.
6. Practice and Testing
Practicing and testing is one of the core steps in the engineering cycle, which is a chart that shows every step of creating a design and bringing your creation to life. To ensure that the machine is high quality, testing in a controlled environment is one of the best ways to ensure that your machine does not malfunction last minute.
Seeing how your creation reacts to its surroundings is critical, especially if the engineering competition you are doing is outside or is related to the environment itself. Every problem requires a different solution, and every solution requires a specific solution. All machines will not be the same - which is why you need to ensure through practicing and testing, that your machine is ready to rumble.
If you need practice in general about programming or engineering, you can sign up for an Inspirit AI class here.
7. Effective Communication
As previously noted, communication is an important aspect of having a proper and functioning team. In the professional field, programmers and engineers alike are always communicating with each other to ensure that everyone knows what is going on, and what they are supposed to be doing. Communication ensures that all aspects of the machine will be able to work with each other in harmony and perfection.
Not only is communication important in engineering competitions or the STEM field, but it is important everywhere. From marriages to navigating a boat, communication is what enables things to get done in the proper way - which is why this is one of the most important things in this article.
8. The Importance of Networking
While this one is kind of optional, networking can also be a great way to boost your team's chances of winning. Engineering competitions, especially robotics, could be really expensive - so networking to help get more funding is an excellent solution to getting the parts you need without becoming broke. While higher-quality parts do not automatically grant you victory, they will help your robot/machine be more effective than before.
About Inspirit AI
AI Scholars Live Online is a 10 session (25-hour) program that exposes high school students to fundamental AI concepts and guides them to build a socially impactful project. Taught by our team of graduate students from Stanford, MIT, and more, students receive a personalized learning experience in small groups with a student-teacher ratio of 5:1.
