Live, learn, make friends, travel, have fun, be serious, think, present yourself, sell your ideas, make rules, bend rules, learn how to win, learn to be a good loser,… Meaning of life? Maybe, but if not, it is definitely a good description of what is BEST and its youngest child nordBEC. This abbreviation hides the Nordic BEST Engineering Competition – the event that took place for the first time in region history in Copenhagen between 27th and 31st of March 2010.

60 students representing 8 Nordic Universities of Technology visited Copenhagen to compete, feel international atmosphere, improve their technical skills and learn about other cultures. For each of them winning their Local BEST Engineering Competitions (LBECs) at their home universities was the passport allowing to come here and do their best to win fabulous prizes and get a free ticket to next stage of the competition. LBECs are only the beginning. NordBEC is just the second step. The serious challenge starts right after. Eight lucky winners from nordBEC were automatically invited to European BEST Engineering Competition (EBEC), which in year 2010 took place in Cluj-Napoca in Romania, from 31st of July to 10th of August. Nordic winning team competed with students from all over the Europe to become the best of the best.

NordBEC (as well as EBEC) is something more that a student engineering contest. Include organizers and special guests from all over the Scandinavia and you will reach the magical number of 100 students at the same place, at the same time. A real melting pot containing different ideas coming from various places, study lines, countries, backgrounds, expressed in has diverse languages and by unique personalities. The cultural diversity that is hard to be created in other conditions. Huge help of the sponsors: Maersk, LEGO, Vestas and Microsoft made this fabulous event happened.

The competition is similar to the ones at the local level. It was divided into two completely different categories – Team Design and Case Study. Taking into account infinite number of ideas originated in the BESTies’ heads, the proposed tasks surprised even organizers. Can you imagine grownup students spending 8 hours on fulfilling their childhood dreams to create unstoppable LEGO robot to beat all their opponents? Mixture of technical skills with deeply hidden ideas from the forgotten parts of our juvenile imagination was probably a good way to win the first prize in this competition category. Compete and have fun at the same time? Welcome to BEST and its nordBEC.

The Team Design task was based on LEGO Mindstorms NXT 2.0 sets provided by LEGO. Participants were supposed to design, build and program the robot that would be able to perform six different tasks. Firstly, they had to make the robot to follow the curved blue line. Then their vehicle should have been able to follow and find the line after losing it. Next they had to deal with more difficult obstacle – the loop. All those tasks were aimed to check robot speed thus the completion time was evaluated. Next three tasks aimed for accuracy. Finding the way out of the chamber by locating one of the randomly opened exits, parallel parking and finally attaching the pen and writing “BEST” on piece of paper demanded from participants serious planning and efficient testing.

The tasks were designed to allow plenty of different approaches and usage of all NTX possibilities and sensors. That is why boundless creativity of participants led them to various solutions for presented problems. Using mainframe from provided manual or designing a new vehicle from scratch? Using touch sensor to find the wall or trying to estimate the distance using the ultrasonic sensor? Placing light sensor at the back, in the middle or at the front of the vehicle? Three or four wheels or maybe tank tracks? Using provided software or any possible addons? How to be fast and accurate at the same time? How to find the balance between focusing on design, programming and testing? All those problems and questions resulted with different approaches and created passionate competition.

After 8 hours of building and additional 3 hours of testing the best team was found. Team Design was won by 4 polish students representing Technical University of Denmark. Doubtlessly they built the best robot and were able to complete all and win 4 out of 6 tasks. Brand new NXT 2.0 got four new owners and Cluj-Napoca got to know the names of the first finalists.

On the other hand, the other participants had to deal with serious and complex real life engineering problems. Case Study task provided by Maersk demanded from students to develop theoretical solution of the problem that sometimes overwhelms even experienced engineers. This time students basing on numerous provided data, reports and the help from professionals had to propose power management solutions for oil platforms. Fresh and innovative points of view resulting in amazing and untypical ideas were key features that amused company judges and opened the way to win. Also in this category students from Copenhagen didn’t give any chance to their rivals and won LEGO sets and the tickets to Romania.

The participant schedule was filled with more than only competition tasks. Personal trainings and various social activities didn’t let them get bored even for a second. Organizers didn’t miss the chance to show participants every worth seeing parts of beautiful Copenhagen during the City Rally. They repaid this great hospitality by presenting their own countries on the last night during the famous BEST International Evening.

When you are reading these words the competition has already happened and instantly become legendary among all Nordic technical universities. It is too late to take part this year, but do not miss your chance to challenge other students during next year LBECs and hopefully next nordBEC. We are going to be there, what about you?

Wojciech Kożuch