In the «xplore 2023» contest, participating alongside Jelgava Technological High School students, the Riga Technical University student team «Power Electronics» won the jury's special prize for a particularly inspiring project. The VIP team earned the opportunity to participate in the competition in Germany after winning the energy efficiency competition «E-es!»
The «xplore 2023» competition was organized by the German company «Phoenix Contact» - the world market leader in the fields of electrification, network development, and automation.
The «Vertically Integrated Project» (VIP) team «Power Electronics» joined with Jelgava Technological High School students to present various RTU Student Innovation Grant Program activities as a means of acquiring new knowledge and skills, which involves practical work in a team within a specific project. This type of learning allows students to learn the basics of engineering from elementary school and will be able to compete with bachelor's level students by the time they reach high school.
The VIP «Power Electronics» team has been working on the development of an electric tricycle at RTU for several semesters, thus acquiring skills from all branches of modern mechanical engineering. Laws, which the learner himself deduces from practical lessons, are much more valuable and sustainable knowledges than those obtained theoretically. «It is a real pleasure to see that the participants of the activity can prove their skills and qualifications also internationally,» emphasizes the team leader, RTU Faculty of Electrical and Environmental Engineering Faculty of Industrial Electronics, and Electrical Engineering Institute associate professor and leading researcher Jānis Zaķis.
The tricycle is being developed under the activity VIP of the Student Innovation Grant Program (ERAF co-financed project No. 1.1.1.3/21/A/005). The purpose of the activity is to enable students from different study programs and levels to cooperate in a long-term research project, while strengthening and expanding the scientific activity of teaching staff. The student teams are interdisciplinary and vertically integrated, i.e., the students represent different levels of study, ranging from RTU Engineering High School students to doctoral students. As teams collect and process data, and develop prototypes, their work is supervised by RTU's leading researchers.
The student innovation grant program is implemented by RTU Science and Innovation Center Design Factory.
