Get ready to think creatively as you bring your ideas to life
As a student at Royal Holloway, you’ll experience hands-on, project-led teaching that encourages you to explore what really matters as you pursue your passion for electronic engineering. And for our end of term Dragons’ Den activity, you’ll have an opportunity to pitch ideas to an industry panel and get some expert feedback while they select the winning teams!
Project-led, hands-on learning
Our innovation challenges run in terms 1 and 2 each year for students in the first and second years of their undergraduate degrees. Working in small teams, you’ll design and build prototypes in response to project briefs that are based on real-world engineering challenges. Each team works on their projects over the course of a term, before presenting them to an expert panel in a Dragons' Den-style contest. The industrialists who make up the panel provide feedback on the design concepts, before ultimately picking the top three, plus a winner for each year group.
Each term a new project is selected to explore a range of engineering topics and techniques including:
- Embedded systems
- Microcontrollers and ARM-based programming
- FPGA technology
- PCB manufacturing
- 3D printing and digital fabrication
These projects are designed to strengthen your technical knowledge and practical skills, while also developing your teamwork, creativity, and problem-solving abilities.
Students value the quality of the feedback offered by the panel of industry experts during the showcase event, as well as the industry insight they provide into the priorities of projects in successful engineering companies.
Our students always approach these challenges with great enthusiasm, appreciating the opportunity to put their creativity to the test as they co-create innovative and diverse designs in answer to the specified brief.
Highlights from the latest competition
In our most recent end of term showcase, students demonstrated outstanding creativity and engineering skill as they presented their finished prototypes to the expert panel – George Sayles (one of our alumni, who graduated in 2023 and now works at the National Grid) and Adrian Girling (a retired CEO from a local engineering company).
First-year challenge:
Our first-year students were tasked with making a quiz show buzzer system for a popular radio show called “Just 60 seconds”!
The system had to allow three people to ‘buzz in’ using a button to stop the countdown timer and a button for the host to restart the timer. In coming up with their designs students could only use discrete digital electronic devices (logic chips and timer chips). They also got the chance to apply practical skills, using 3D printers and laser cutters to do things like fabricate casings, as they built their prototypes.
There were lots of innovative designs and our experts had a hard time choosing the top three teams, including an overall winner. Our winning teams and designs were:
1st Prize
- Ibtisam, Paramwier, Ronnie, and Conor
2nd Prize
- Lucas, Max, Harriet, and Avon
3rd Prize
- Aviale, Oliver, Matt, and Maxime
Second-year challenge:
Our second-year students were asked to design and build an autonomous food delivery vehicle that could follow a path and stop at various signs to allow customers to buy some food, or perhaps an ice cream!
The vehicle used light sensing to follow a line and ultrasound sensors to detect obstacles and stop signs. The teams were given a robot chassis, and an ARM based microcontroller and programmed the whole system using industry standard software.
In total, twelve teams competed for the top prize – with one outright winner selected from the top three designs.
Why it matters
As a department, we believe creativity matters for great engineering. The project-led activities at the heart of our teaching will inspire your ability to think innovatively, work collaboratively, and turn your ideas into ingenious solutions.
When you take part in these challenges you’ll gain:
- Hands-on experience using real-world tools and techniques
- Confidence working in teams and presenting your ideas
- Skills that employers in the tech and engineering sectors value
- It's also a lot of fun!
Follow your passion into the creative, innovative world of Electronic Engineering and develop the ingenuity, invention and product development skills you'll need to thrive in this rapidly expanding industry.
Keen to find out more? Follow the links to explore our courses and discover news about our competitions in previous years.
All images courtesy of Callum Shingleton-Smith (student photographer)
