A team of students from National Taiwan University of Science and Technology claimed the grand prize at this year’s International Future Energy Challenge in Michigan for a high-efficiency wireless charging system for electric vehicles, the school said yesterday.
The young mechanics prevailed in the final stage of the competition held by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, which concluded last week, beating eight other teams from around the world.
Team leader Chen Ming-cheng (陳明正), a doctoral student, said his team won the top prize because their design beat the evaluation panel’s expectations.
Extra efforts by the team included a design known as the power factor correction universal input, which allows for universal application of the charging device by overcoming voltage differences in electricity supplied in different regions, Chen said.
The feature also ensures that the phase of an external power source is aligned with the phase of electricity the device generates, thereby boosting a device’s energy efficiency, he said.
Another feature that earned them a “bonus” was constant current and constant voltage design, which protects the charging device from going haywire, he said.
The wireless charging device generates electricity by equalizing the frequencies emitted by ferromagnetic coils installed in a car battery and an external power supply, thereby achieving resonance, which enables transmissions of electromagnetic waves from the power supply to the battery, Chen said.
During the final stage of the competition, contestants were asked to set up their devices and ensure their steady performance for 90 minutes.
That was not an easy task, he said, as finalists must overcome any technical difficulties caused by parts damaged during long-distance transportation.
The participants were graded based on the weight, size and cost-efficiency of their devices, as well as their presentations, he said.
Chen said that the judges put a lot of emphasis on presentation, which was assigned a weighting of 15 percent, adding that he had rarely seen presentation skills given such a high degree of importance in the Taiwanese education system.
He called on Taiwanese students to develop strong presentation skills, a quality he said many Taiwanese teachers neglect.
Among the other finalists, Chen said a team from Kunming University of Science and Technology in China impressed him the most.
“Even though we managed to outperform them, I could feel the gap between Taiwanese and Chinese students has become much smaller compared with last year’s competition,” he said. “Chinese students are very aggressive and inquisitive, and I think Taiwanese students can learn to show these qualities.”
He said his team’s accomplishment was the result of two years’ preparation and hard work, having survived a stringent vetting process in which many participants were eliminated by the organizers.
Chen said his team first submitted a proposal on the project in 2013 and underwent a lengthy appraisal that ended in March.
He said that he and his team would apply for a patent for the device in Taiwan, then in China and the US.
The device would be ready to market once it has passed the requisite safety inspections, he said.
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