Engineers of Innovation

To stimulate the solar sport racing and make it easier innovate for new teams, Yacht Club De Monaco & Solar Sport One launched an “Innovation Challenge”. To participate they asked for a motivation and financial plan for the next three years. The price? A free V20 boat!

In close cooperation with the boat committee we considered the option to participate in this contest. After some discussion we decided to give it a shot and see what happens.

The discussion was about building a self-made custom boat and the ready to go V20 boat. We are an engineering society, so is getting a fully functional boat not cheating and lame? We decided it is not.

It is really hard to start a society like Engineers of Innovation from scratch since we do not have any sponsors yet (and thus money) or a workshop. With a V20 boat we are able to start immediately and join races and thus motivating members to participate. If we would build a boat by ourselves it would take months extra to find enough sponsors to start building a boat and the building process will take a lot of time as well.

The V20 boat maybe ready to go, but there are some parts on the boat that aren’t restricted in the regulations. Therefore there is still enough to design and  a lot of testing to do, for both the electrical and mechanical parts of the boat. Some examples of these are the hydrofoils and propellers, which are free to design and use during the competition. However there are parts of the restricted areas that can be modified, if accepted by the other teams, afterwards we need to publish our information to those teams.

If we win the V20 boat it does not mean we will never build a boat ourselves. We think this is a good way to kick start our society, attract new potential sponsors and motivate members. After a couple of years when there is more money and members we still plan to develop our own boat from scratch! Also all the knowledge we build up during the design, testing and races with de V20, we can use in the design of our own solar boat.

For better understanding the V20 boat, we arranged a meeting with the V20 designers and producers, Vripack. On Wednesday 10^th of May we were invited to come by and discuss some of the many possible innovations they thought were useful and achievable.

Please read our contest submission for Yacht Club De Monaco here

Ps.

If you are interested to join a committee please do not hesitate to send us an email! We are always searching for motivated members to actively think about the society, to make decision about thinks like participating to contests like these, to attract new sponsors, help with designing boat parts and organizing society and alumni events

On wednesday the 3rd of May we went to Solar Sport One (As you maybe already know the Dutch Solar Challenge will continue under a new name: Solar Sport One) for a team meeting. The meeting was about the new form of Solar racing and the changes in rules, classes and types of races. We discussed the possibility to merge the A-class boats and the Top-class boats together and what the benefits and the disadvantages are. De race organisation listened to the feedback and will use it to form the next generation of solar racing.

Trials with the new rules and the merged classes will be held in Lelystad and Rotterdam in june and september respectively. We are really curious to the outcome.

The presentation of the solar sport one meeting can be found here.

Engineers of Innovation is a alumni society for (former)students of the faculty Technology and Engineering at the University Of applied Sciences Amsterdam. The society organizes varies activities like a monthly drink at every second friday of the month. Secondly the society will organize visits to interesting companies, so that (former)students can get in contact (for either internships or jobs). Also, the ambition of the society is to compete in innovative projects like the Dutch Solar Challenge.

Are you interested or do you want more information? Please send a message to  info@engineersofinnovation.nl or take a look at our website:  https://enginersofinnovation.nl/

Dear members and interested people of Engineers of Innovation.

We have decided on a date and location for our monthly meetup. We will like to have a drink/meeting at every second friday of the month from 19:00 in Café Vrijdag. Please feel free to join, you don’t have to be a member (yet). If you don’t know Café Vrijdag, it is close to Hogeschool Leeuwenburg, click here for more information.

The next monthly meeting will be on 14th of April, see our calendar. (Tip: You can add Engineers of Innovation’s calendar to your own calendar.)

Hope to see you there

Dear all, tomorrow evening we have our next conference. We will talk about our progress and next steps. Everyone is welcome, we will start at 18:00. Location Leeuwenburg,  C1.72. There will be drinks and snacks. See you tomorrow!

Beste aankomende leden, morgenavond is er weer een bijeenkomst. We gaan het over onze voortgang en de vervolgstappen hebben. Uiteraard is iedereen welkom, we beginnen om 18:00 in lokaal C1.72 op locatie Leeuwenburg. Er zullen drankjes en hapjes aanwezig zijn. Tot morgen!