On Wednesday 11th March, three teams from Queen Mary’s College competed in this year’s Rotary Technology Tournament, walking away with a top award in the Advanced category.
What is the Rotary Technology Tournament?
The Rotary Technology Tournament is a prestigious national competition designed for the next generation of engineers. Run by local volunteers from the Basingstoke and Loddon Valley Rotary club, the event challenges students to apply classroom theory to real-world mechanical problems.
The Challenge
This year’s brief tasked teams to design and build a 4-wheeled autonomous rover capable of:
- Travelling along a pipeline.
- Collecting debris.
- Successfully retrieving the items and returning to base.
Teams worked under strict time constraints to design, build and test their prototypes from ideation to final construction, before putting them to the test against rival designs in a series of competitive trials.
More Than Mechanics: The Design Lifecycle
Engineering goes beyond technical and mechanical skills, and so, a critical element of the project was the communication of ideas through the development of a technical portfolio.
Teams were required to document their entire journey, including initial conceptual ideas, troubleshooting the challenges they faced, task allocation and refinements made to their final prototype.
This provided students with hands-on experience of the full design-to-engineering lifecycle, with professional judges evaluating how effectively teams collaborated and managed project responsibilities.
QMC Wins Best Portfolio Award
We are proud to announce that QMC Team One was awarded the prize for Best Portfolio in the Advanced category.
The judges were especially impressed with the team’s ability to communicate complex ideas, noting that their detailed diagrams illustrated a sophisticated understanding of the technical hurdles faced throughout the project.
There were broad smiles as Ethan, Filipa and Elliot posed proudly with their trophy, presented by Basingstoke Mayor, Cllr Colin Phillimore, who congratulated our students on their success.
