Competition: Can you design a drone with a sixth sense?

element14.com, the community for engineers, has launched the Sixth Sense Design Challenge, which tasks its community with creating a small remotely operated or autonomous vehicle, such as a drone, a robot or a tunnel exploration device. As an added twist, the project should showcase a ‘sixth sense’ by displaying the capabilities of ST Microelectronics and TE Connectivity products to improve remote vehicle sensing and data collection. Ideas of potential applications for the challenge could be as broad as a bushfire sensing drone, to a self-guiding drain snake or underwater pipeline monitor.

The Sixth Sense Design Challenge highlights element14’s aim to help facilitate out-of-the-box designs that use technology to change the world for the better. The element14 community’s design challenges are geared towards design engineers, maintenance and test engineers, and makers.

“As the Development Distributor, we encourage our half a million community members to create projects that are fun, inventive and beneficial to society,” said Dianne Kibbey, Global Head of Community and Social Media for element14. “Together with our partners ST Microelectronics and TE Connectivity, we’re providing kits to 20 participants to help them create innovative designs that take their projects to another level. With sensing at the core of the Internet of Things, this design challenge gives our challengers the opportunity to create something that can really test the capabilities of these devices.”

Makers and engineers can apply to participate in the Sixth Sense Design Challenge now through to 15 October. The 20 challengers will be announced on 20 October and will have 11 weeks to build their projects, producing at least 10 blog posts about the process to share their development with the element14 community along the way. Entries will be judged by a range of technical judges from TE Connectivity and ST Microelectronics on originality, innovation and technical merit.

The 20 element14 community members selected to compete in this design challenge will receive a free challenger kit from STMicroelectronics and TE Connectivity, including all of the kit development boards and kit components needed to create their designs.

The first-place winner in the Sixth Sense Design Challenge will receive a Lulzbot Taz 6 3D Printer valued at more than $2500. The runner-up will receive the Lulzbot Mini 2 3D Printer worth more than $1500 and each participant who completes the design challenge will receive a mystery prize.

To learn more about the Sixth Sense design challenge, visit: www.element14.com/sixthsense.

Image credit: ©stock.adobe.com/au/D.SERIN

Originally published here.