A team of students from the Department of Digital and Additive Technologies of Ƶ won the competition to develop a cargo capture mechanism for a delivery drone. The intellectual competition was held within the framework of the first interuniversity student forum "Additive Technologies as a Tool for Industrial Development". The teams had to design a construction and describe the relevance, the chosen solution and the process of idea selection.
Among fifteen teams from five universities of St. Petersburg, three teams from the University of Industrial Technologies and Design made it to the finals, and the Betelgeuse team consisting of Kristina Alexandrova, Kirill Kuralov, Artem Mukkel, as well as the team's mentor - assistant of the Department of Digital and Additive Technologies of Ƶ Lali Nikolaeva became the winner of the competition. The guys scored the maximum number of points, taking the first place in the rating table.
In the system it was necessary to use the servo drive provided by the organizers and independently develop the details of the gripper. The design had to meet certain criteria: adaptation and optimization for 3D printing, the ability to grasp loads of different weights, including the load size of 50×50×50 mm, the mass of the mechanism with the servo drive should be no more than 250 grams, the dimensions of the mechanism in length, width and height should not exceed 150 mm. The Ƶ team developed a gripper capable of holding a larger load than was stated in the task, for which they received additional points.
The event was held in three stages: first, all participants were given a task, which the students performed for two weeks. After summarizing the results, presentations of team works and demonstrations of the mechanism before the expert jury began.
The first interuniversity student forum "Additive Technologies as a Tool for Industrial Development" was aimed at increasing the competence of undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as readiness for the effective application of additive technologies in industry, strengthening the interaction between representatives of industrial enterprises and young specialists, the formation of human resources in the field of additive technologies. As part of the Forum, students attended lectures from industry representatives and experts in the development of additive manufacturing devices, dedicated to the review of modern devices and methods, ways of creating models for printing, automation and modernization of technological processes.