On 12 February 2013, ESIGELEC took part in the National Instruments Days for the second year in a row. The Engineering Project team, winners of the robotics mini-cup held at the CISE on 17 January, was in the running to win the RIO cup, a competition for higher education establishments. Entrants had to design an autonomous robot using the LabVIEW Robotics kit, and programme it to be capable of following a specific route, identifying obstacles and manipulating a Rubik's Cube, all in the shortest possible time period.

22 teams were in competition to win the RIO cup and the ESIGELEC students won the silver medal, behind Joseph Fourier University (IUT of Grenoble). The prize rewarded a year of hard work by Ludovic Grivault, Cheng Danxi, Samuel Cools, Gaëtan Maillard, Romaic Kamgang and Mathieu Barbier, under the supervision of Nicolas Ragot, a teacher-researcher at ESIGELEC-IRSEEM.

In the light of the success of the first two instalments of this competition, National Instruments has already scheduled the next one for 11 February 2014. New PING groups have already started work on this project and should be worthy successors.

The engineering project, carried out in teams of 6 students, covers the 2nd and 3rd years of the engineering cycle. Each team has the mission of developing a project suggested by a business or research body, from feasibility study to project delivery.

Contact: Nicolas Ragot, Head of the Biomedical Engineering major, Teacher-Researcher in the Department of Embedded Systems and Instrumentation, nicolas.ragot@esigelec.fr