Through action, mud and fun, MSOE vehicle takes first
| Published: 05/10/2004 |
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An MSOE student team took first place at the national Basic Utility Vehicle competition this weekend in Zionsville, Ind., racing ahead of 16 teams with their well-designed and executed vehicle. The fourth annual competition is an effort to develop simple, low-cost utility vehicles that can benefit people in rural areas of developing countries.
The MSOE team excelled in its written report, oral presentation, and the performance testing, and drove-home a score of 85 out of possible 100, outdistancing second-place finishers Tri-State (Indiana) University and third-place Southern Alberta (Canada) Institute of Technology.
Some of the performance tests for the day included an endurance run, acceleration test, agility test, mud pit crossing, hill climb, obstacle course, static pull, and swamp crossing. The written report included detailed engineering analyses of which one judge commented that “MSOE has set a new standard for engineering reports.”
“I truly feel that we won this competition because of the hard work and countless hours of preparation that we put into the design and fabrication phases,” said team member Adam Schneider. “Over the past 9 months, our team put anywhere from 800 to 1,000 hours of work into this BUV. When we started this project, our goals were to win the competition, raise awareness for the BUV project on campus and have fun as a team – we accomplished these goals and then some.”
Details are available on the sponsor Web site, Institute for Affordable Transportation, at http://www.drivebuv.org. For its victory, the team won round-trip airline tickets to anywhere in the continental United States and tickets to the Indianapolis 500.
2004 BUV Competition Team Members and Hometown
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Bill Alsteen -- Little Suamico, Wis.
Jason Gudex -- Campbellsport, Wis.
Jason Mueller -- Kewaunee, Wis.
Randy Rumpf -- New Holstein, Wis.
Adam Schneider -- Kiel, Wis.
Kurt Snyder -- Kewaskum, Wis.
Advisor was Dr. John Pakkala, assistant professor, Mechanical Engineering Department