Skip to content Skip to main navigation Report an accessibility issue

Tech Carnivol Hosts Competitions at Engineer’s Day

On October 20th, Tech Carnivol—a science and engineering festival designed and organized by UT students to help spotlight STEM education and its impact beyond engineering—held its 2nd annual festival. Held in conjunction with UT’s Engineers Day celebration, Tech Carnivol hosted competitions in robotics, business and physics.

carnivol2
One of the highlight events of Tech Carnivol was Roborage “Arena”—a robot war in which teams remotely operated their robots to battle with each other and take control of the arena. In order to accumulate points, the robots had to turn off the lights on their poles. To slow down the opponents, the robots could choose to turn on the lights on their opponents’ poles. This unique competition designed by UT’s American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) attracted student participants from UT, the University of South Carolina, and various high schools from Alabama and Tennessee to compete for the $1,200 cash prize. Out of the eight teams, a team from Oak Ridge High School won first place.

carnivol1In another event titled “Houston, we have a problem!”, student teams were tasked with building craft boats that can travel a set distance using different propulsion techniques with a set of materials that were provided to them. Materials such as foam boards, paper clips, bar soap, balloons, disposable spoons, rubber bands, etc. were provided to each team. A team of two students from UT that managed to build and demonstrate boats that can travel with seven different propulsion techniques won the competition.

The festival also included an Elevator pitch competition in which students get just 90 seconds to present their business idea to a potential “investor,” and an autonomous robotics competition in which robots must complete a course, quickly and autonomously.

In total, awards worth $3,000 were given to winners of the Tech Carnivol competitions.

Tech Carnivol’s student organization would like to thank its corporate sponsors (MAHLE and Pololu), and the Department of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Biomedical Engineering, the Engineering Entrepreneurship Program, and the Student Programming Allocation Committee who helped sponsor the event from the university’s side. The organization also recognizes the help and support offered by over 40 students who were involved in organizing this festival.

To learn more about Tech Carnivol, please visit their website and follow them on Facebook and Twitter (@TechCarnivol).