Innovation Project

Innovation Project 2023

‘SMARTSWEEPERS: ENGINEERING TOMORROW'S GREEN STREETS’ - (MARK ZANDER)

Addressing both current and future socio-economic challenges demands more than just political and social support; it requires groundbreaking technological innovations.
A well-functioning waste management system stands as a vital cornerstone for any major city. Its primary functions involve the collection and subsequent treatment of municipal waste. The use of manual loading and operation of garbage trucks contributes significantly to the high personnel costs, posing an increasingly daunting challenge in times of labor shortages.
To tackle this issue, the proposal of employing autonomous garbage vehicles for automated waste collection has surfaced. Consequently, the challenge of the ‘Innovation Project 2023’ is to explore inventive solutions for autonomous urban waste collection. This project entails the development and testing of model-scale prototypes with the ultimate aim of demonstrating the feasibility of automating the entire process, from municipal waste collection to its preparation for further processing, including unloading at landfills.
Seventy teams of undergraduate students are actively engaged in a spirited competition to design the most efficient engineering systems for this visionary endeavour.

AGILE DEVELOPMENT AND PD|Z PRINCIPLES

The innovation project enables students to implement agile product development principles in a creative, competitive yet guided setting. By incorporating aspects of Scrum and Kanban methodologies, the teams operate in fortnightly sprint cycles and assess their interim outcomes at the end of each cycle.
Coaching Innovation Projects, a course specifically aimed at senior mechanical engineering students, provides guidance and support to coach engineering teams engaged in the Innovation Project. Using a range of product development principles, the coaches lead students through the sprints and iterations of the agile process for developing products. The foundation of these principles is a set of meticulously chosen practices arising from research conducted by pd|z.

AWARDS

To determine the winners of this year's competition, student teams will showcase the performance and creativity of their innovative systems. The final will take place on 19th December 2023 and feature 24 qualified teams competing against one another. The winner of the creativity category will be determined by a public vote from the 5 finalists.