Innovation, Design and Engineering (IDE) Championships 2015

IDE Championships 2015 took place on 20 March 2015, at Anderson Secondary School. This is the fourth year of the IDE competition series. Besides IDE Challenge and IDE LEGO Robotics, this year we have a new competition category: IDE Arduino Robotics. We also have IDA Labs as co-organiser for this year. IDE2015 saw a record participation of 250 students across primary, secondary and public teams from Singapore.

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The spirit of the IDE competition is the element of an unknown challenge. These challenges vary from year to year, but the emphasis on innovativeness, design element, and engineering remains at the heart of this event. Students have to work under limited time, with limited resources, to create the best possible solution to the challenge.

IDE Challenge

IDE Challenge is a hands-on competition with one or more engineering challenges. The challenge details will be announced one week before the actual competition day and students can use this time to prepare their solution design. On the day of the competition, students will each receive a set of materials to create the most effective design under limited time.

For this year, teams have to work on 3 different challenges simultaneously. They have to build a bridge structure that is able to traverse a 30cm gap; a rubber band powered car that is able to travel a distance of 3m; and a structure that is able to protect eggs from breaking by dropping from a 3 storey height.

Students from Paya Lebar Methodist Girls’ School working on their bridge structure

A bridge loading in action, withstanding the weight of drink cans

Students from Anderson Secondary School testing their egg drop parachute launch system

Students from Nan Hua High School doing their egg drop with parachute

Inspecting the eggs for cracks

A student from St Andrew’s Secondary School working on his rubber band power car

At the starting line of the rubber band car race

IDE LEGO Robotics

IDE LEGO Robotics, or previously known as E4 Cluster RoboZone, is a surprise mission style robotics competition. The competition mission is only announced on the morning of the competition, and students have 5 hours to strategise, build, and program their robot to accomplish the mission.

This year’s mission is for teams to be able to collect or deposit (depending on age category) the coloured lego cubes, while avoiding the black cubes. It is a simple yet challenging competition mission that put the students’ creativity and problem solving skill to the test.

Students from Anglican High School constructing their robot

Students from Punggol Primary School testing their robot

Students from School of Science and Technology testing their robot

IDE Arduino Robotics

IDE Arduino Robotics is a new competition category whereby teams will make use of the popular Arduino microcontroller platform to compete in a programming competition. Students are given a list of programming problem to solve within 5 hours. The team that manages to solve the problems in the least amount of time wins.