We have reached the final day of the competition! It’s the last opportunity for participants to prove their worth to the task partners, Valeo and Honeywell.

It was the second day for the Valeo task for Team Design and participants had to present in front of the jury from the company. The presentations consisted in being able to fit their racks in both hoods of cars with different sizes. They had a few minutes to present their idea and to change between each hood of the car. When the prototype was placed on the hood with the Velodyne LiDAR in it, the jury checked if it was high enough for the hood to not block the laser and also low enough so that it’s resistant to higher speeds.

While the presentations were happening in the hall, across from it there were happening the case study presentations. This day, the Case Study task was provided by the European Patent Office and it consisted of participants putting themselves in the role of an interdisciplinary team of inventors and founders of a start-up. This team had to develop ideas about a public transport system/service that would make transportation easier for people that are visually impaired. The solution had to cover the full travel from A to B and it should be safe and balance costs and travel time. Besides from that, the teams needed to find existing technical solutions on Espacenet and know what does it take to use the technology that they find. Participants found EPO’s task useful for their future since they now know how to search for patents and how they can use them.

To see the presentations of the solutions provided by the students for the Case Study and Team Design, go to our youtube page @BESTorganisation.

Author: Carolina Amorim

“I think all of them are winners because they built something and it works!” said Marie Chaloupková, Chief of Engineering at Y Soft be3D, impressed with the concept of the event. When asked what they think about the partnership with EBEC Final she said “For us is a chance to see the printers in a real environment…”, “We now know how the kids will actually be modeling and how they will be using them.”.

Y Soft supplied 3D printers for the participants to use freely and be able to do even better models by printing certain pieces that they design. The team design topic for the last two days of the competition was provided by Valeo. Participants will have to design a roof rack mount that will be easily mountable by a car passenger and is robust enough to withstand the maximum acceleration of a modern car. The rack will hold the Velodyne LiDAR which is a laser sensor that emits laser rays and receives reflections from objects, such as buildings, other cars, etc.

The case study task was powered by Honeywell which consists of being able to understand basics of the heating system design and methods used in Machine Learning or Data Analysis to come up with a solution that is using the data from the sensors. Students liked to create a new heating system to be installed in smart homes in order for the future air conditioning system to be more efficient.

To see the presentations of the solutions provided by the students for the case study, go to our youtube page @BESTorganisation.

Author: Carolina Amorim

The adventure continues in Brno for the second day of the competition! Case Study created the idea of a smart home and Team Design built a box transporting vehicle.

Team Design teams got the chance to show what they are worth on the presentations of their task solutions. Each team had two minutes to present their solution and four to make the created vehicle lift three boxes and move them through an obstacle course.
In order to make the task, participants have an EBEC shop and access to 3D printing. All of this provided by Alfun, Isover and Ysoft.

When asked what they learned from the task, team Design Boys said “The most important thing that we learned in this challenge was time management. We need to manage our time more efficiently.”. The team was positive, showing their good team spirit!

As for case study, a two-part task was presented by Eaton. In the first part, participants needed to design a smart home based on smartgrids. While the second part had two options, either considering problems of the efficiency of power transmission or identifying energy aggregators for maintaining the grid frequency. The presentations were made at the end of the day leaving the jury impressed with their ideas.

To see the presentations of the teams, go to youtube @BESTorganisation.

Author: Carolina Amorim

The competition for the European Champions of Technology has started! Yesterday was the official first day of the competition, where 120 students gave their best to find solutions for the tasks proposed by the companies.

The case study task was proposed by the city of Brno. It consisted of creating a plan of a sensoric laboratory in the Brno Exhibition Hall. The laboratory would serve to collect different types of data in order to understand the problems of the city and to improve it by making it smart. In the end of the day, the participants’ ideas were presented in front of a jury.

The reactions of the participants were positive even with such a time-wise challenging task, saying “…it was very clear what we had to do…” and “…we managed to do it and are satisfied with the results.”.

Skoda proposed the team design task that will have a duration of two days. The proposed task was to create a vehicle capable of lifting 3 boxes from a shelf, moving them through an obstacle course and storing them in another shelf at the end of the course. Today there will be the presentations of solutions that the students came up with.

To see more about the competition, watch the live stream on youtube @BESTorganisation.

Author: Carolina Amorim

The winners of the regional rounds started the day with a tour of the competition place in order for them to know their working rounds and are prepared for the following competition days.

“We are very proud to host the final round of EBEC”, said Jaroslav Kacer, the Deputy Mayor of the Statutory City of Brno at the ceremony held at Brno Exhibition Centre. The ceremony also counted with welcoming speeches from Elias Solana, EBEC 2017 Coordinator, Samuel Lesko, President of BEST Brno, and Daniel Kovac, EBEC 2017 Main Organizer. With heart warming speeches thanking everyone for their hard work to make this event possible, participants felt the inspiring environment of BEST, Brno and the university. “The collaboration and fraternity spirit (…) takes the best example in the organization of EBEC. People born up to 6000 km away from each other, work together in the same direction” said Elias Solana. Samuel Lesko also complimented the organization saying “I truly stand behind the vision of this organization and I believe BEST is making the world a better place”. Following Samuel’s speech, the Main Organizer, Daniel Kovac, showed a video of the preparations for the event and invited all of the organizers on stage for a big round of applause.

Marketa Lorinczy presenting JIC Starcube.

Brightening the ceremony, Anezka Knapkova, a choreographer/dancer champion of tap dance in Czech Republic and the second runner up at the World Championship, charmed the audience with a flowing, astonishing and powerful dance.

Following the performance, there were presentations by Marketa Lorinczy from JIC Starcube, a startup incubator with several programs for every entrepreneur who is looking to develop a startup, and Peter Nemec from the Brno University of Technology, showing the growing institution and all of the opportunities that it has to offer.

After the ceremony, students were invited to take a tour of the Exhibition Center and watch a presentation on 3D printing technology, that will be used in the competition, by Jaroslav List, a participant of last year’s final round of EBEC. A buffet followed, providing a great chance for the attendees to interact with each other and exchange their views on the competition.

The official opening day marks the beginning of the adventure in Brno! With an incredible heartening ceremony, the tone has now been set for the participants. As the coordinator, Elias Solana, said, “Now it is time for you, participants, to challenge yourselves, to test your limits, to give your BEST and to show why you are the finest minds of the European universities.”

Celebrate with us the beginning of this final round and watch the ceremony on youtube @BESTorganisation.

Author: Carolina Amorim

EBEC final is about to start! The adventure begins today in Brno with the arrival of the regional rounds winning teams.

For the following days, the teams will have the opportunity to develop themselves by surpassing several challenges proposed by the task partners. These challenges are in two categories: Case Study, analysis and presentation of a theoretical solution; Team Design, design and construction of a prototype model.

For Case Study, there are 4 task partners: Brno, EPO, Eaton and Honeywell. Brno is the second-largest city in Czech Republic with more than 86,000 students and 14 universities with a developing centre of industry, science, information technology and research; EPO, European Patent Office, has a core activity to search and examine patent applications working in close cooperation with patent offices and countries around the works; Eaton is the solver of the toughest power management challenges on the planet and Honeywell, a company that produces a variety of commercial and consumer products, engineering services and aerospace systems. EBEC 2017 Case Study promises to have one of the most interesting challenges yet!

As for Team Design, the task partners are Skoda and Valeo. Both of the companies are in the automobile industry: Skoda is the biggest Czech company by revenue, the biggest Czech exporter and one of the biggest Czech employers. Valeo develops and produces parts for smart and environmentally friendly cars. By systematically investing into R&D, they are improving the cars in order to make them easily driven.

Do not miss the chance to get a glimpse of the challenges and the interesting solutions that the teams will come up with! Feel a unique atmosphere and watch the future being designed today! Tune into our livestream on youtube at @BESTorganisation.

Author: Carolina Amorim

After last years’ journey to Belgrade, we are now heading to beautiful Brno to witness the final round of the 9th edition of the prestigious engineering competition for students – EBEC. This summer we will experience great enthusiasm and ingenuity of competitors from all over Europe in an amazing city saturated with students’ life and energy.

After the successful closing of local rounds, everything just begins for the winning teams, that are now getting ready for regional rounds, as well as for local BEST group Brno, that has to go on with preparations for the Final! In the beginning of March, international teams of BEST members visited us during our Short Intensive Meeting to check out the spaces where the event is going to take place, help us to test and discuss some of the tasks and taste a little bit of Czech culture too.

BEST Brno and international teams don’t know what “sleep” means nowadays. Fifteen international organisers, EBEC team, Topic Group and many more are taking care of the perfect running of this incredible project. Corporate Relations Group is intensively working on partnerships with companies so we can make this event grand and unforgettable!

Our promising competitors are showing their skills at regional rounds until 25th of May at the moment, and after that the best 120 participants will be chosen to proceed to the final round, where only one team from each of two categories will become the very winner.

And what’s next? We will continue with superhuman attitude, because the date is uncompromisingly approaching us and there is still a lot of work to do, but you can just lean back and wait for awesomeness to come to central Europe this summer!

Author: Bianka Trencanova

The great Journey to Belgrade that started almost one year ago, eventually had to come to an end. On the 9th of August, the 8th edition of EBEC officially finished with the Closing Ceremony of EBEC Final 2016 in Belgrade.

The Closing Ceremony was concluded with the announcement of the final winners of the competition. The Team of Portugal, coming from the University of Porto, conquered the first place in the Case Study category, while the team from Kaunas University of Technology, representing the Baltic Region, were pronounced winners in the Team Design category. Having succeeded through three competition rounds and thousands of students, these teams prove that everything is possible and that if you dare to dream and to challenge yourself, you can “Design the Future. Today.”

In detail, the results for all the tasks were as follows:

Case Study

Final Results

1st place: Portugal (Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto)

2nd place: Nordic (Chalmers University of Technology)

3rd place: Italy (Sapienza University of Rome)

Task 1: Factory Revitalization

1st place: Portugal (Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto)

2nd place: Ukraine (Kyiv Polytechnic Institute)

3rd place: Spain (Universidad de Valladolid)

2nd Task: Stopping Piracy

1st place: Baltic (Riga Technical University)

2nd place: France (INSA Lyon)

3rd place: Central (Budapest University of Technology and Economics)

3rd Task: At the front of technology – EPO

1st place: Nordic (Chalmers University of Technology)

2nd place: Portugal (Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto)

3rd place: Italy (Sapienza University of Rome)

4th Task: Augmented Reality – EATON

1st place: Ukraine (Kyiv Polytechnic Institute)

2nd place: Central (Budapest University of Technology and Economics)

3rd place: Benelux (KU Leuven)

Team Design

Final Results

1st place: Baltic (Kaunas University of Technology)

2nd place: Central (Brno University of Technology)

3rd place: Ukraine (Kyiv Polytechnic Institute)

Task 1: From Packaging to distribution – Autodesk

1st place: Central (Brno University of Technology)

2nd place: Baltic (Kaunas University of Technology)

3rd place: Ukraine (Kyiv Polytechnic Institute)

Task 2: Removing and Defusing Landmines

1st place: Nordic (Lund University)

2nd place: Baltic (Kaunas University of Technology)

3rd place: Central (Brno University of Technology)

Ever wondered what it is like to be in a place where everything is possible, where ideas turn into reality, where the world is not made up by things, but you make the world? If you can picture that, then you can get a glimpse of what EBEC is all about!

During the 10 intensive days of the Final Round of the European BEST Engineering Competition, students from all corners of Europe were called to prove their teamwork, their innovation and their passion, they were urged to exceed their limits, to fail and to succeed, to design their future. But it is not only these that made this experience valuable, because EBEC is not just a competition. This event challenged students to familiarize with different cultural backgrounds, to unite their differences, to enjoy themselves and to forge friendships that surpass the competitiveness.

These attributes were revealed beyond any shadow of a doubt on the 4th of August, when the first presentations of Team Design took place. The atmosphere was tense in the Entrance Hall of the University of Belgrade; everyone was on edge when the first team managed to assemble the box and held their breath when the box containing the egg performed the drop test. The audience was not disappointed, for when the egg was retrieved intact, the Hall came to life, participants, organisers and jury burst into applauding, they cheered together for the team and the EBEC spirit shined!

It is not the destination that matters, they say, it is the journey. If we look back at the Journey to Belgrade, we can see that in the one year it lasted, it embraced thousands of students – participants and organisers – on its way through Europe. EBEC challenged all these people, took the best out of them and allowed them to materialize their dreams. Though, as all journeys, the one to Belgrade had to come to an end as well.

“In your Journey, there may have been times when you enjoyed the ride and times you might have wanted to leave the road on the way” said Adrien Merlier, President of BEST during the Closing Ceremony. “But in the end, you all reached the finish line in this memorable journey and even though today there will only be one winner in each category, I know that in reality, each and everyone of you won something greater than a trophy. Here, you got a glimpse of what modern engineers do; using their creativity and knowledge together towards one common goal, to challenge the impossible!”

EBEC 2016 may have ended, but EBEC returns soon to inspire, to motivate and to develop the next generation of engineering students. A new adventure begins soon, towards one new destination; EBEC Final 2017 in Brno!