9 April 2018
20180409 Team Mechfly Champion At Safmc 2018 E1523243948303

Team MechFly emerge champion at the 2018 Singapore Amazing Flying Machine Competition’s Unconventional Category

Image: The team receiving their first place award at the award ceremony. 
(From left to right) Dr Mohamad Maliki bin Osman, Senior Minister of State at the Ministry of Defence and Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Glenvicia Sim Hui Xian, Lionel Bryant Handison, Thaddeus Tan Woon Siang, Sim Boon Liang, and Kenneth Kwek Kai Wen.

Team MechFly from the Department of Mechanical Engineering (ME Dept) has emerged champion of Category E (Unconventional) at the 2018 Singapore Amazing Flying Machine Competition (SAFMC 2018) held on 5 April.

SAFMC is an annual event organised by DSO National Laboratories and Science Centre Singapore. It comprises of multiple categories, and participated by hundreds of teams from Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand, and Indonesia. Open to the public, the Unconventional Category allows the participants to use their wildest imagination to produce unconventional ideas, such as waterproof flying machines that can take off from the water, and flying vehicles that can climb vertical walls.

The NUS team comprises of five undergraduate students – Glenvicia Sim Hui Xian (year 3, Team Lead 1), Lionel Bryant Handison (year 3, Team Lead 2), Thaddeus Tan Woon Siang (year 4), Sim Boon Liang (year 3), and Kenneth Kwek Kai Wen (year 3, pilot). The team is part of a larger team dedicated to the design and fabrication of the flapping wing micro-air-vehicle (MAV). The entire 2018 team consists of 11 undergraduate students from the ME Dept, supervised by Dr Chan Woei Leong. This is the second time Team MechFly has participated in the SAFMC. The NUS team received the Special Recognition Award in the 2017 SAFMC.

During the flight challenge, Team MechFly demonstrated a mission scenario, in which the MAV was deployed into a laboratory with spilled chemical, flew through obstacles (hoops), collected the spilled chemical sample with an attached cotton bud, and released neutralizing agent (popping balloons with a needle mounted on the MAV). Ultimately, it was the ingenuity and biomimicry of the less than 30g MAV that has won the judges’ hearts.

20180409 Team Mechfly Champion At Safmc 2018 2
Image: Demonstration of the flapping wing MAV to the judges.

The 2018 team is sponsored by Airbus, Micronwings, Duratools, 1BitSquared, Tenma, and Multicomp.

Full list of members in Team MechFly 2018:

  1. Glenvicia Sim Hui Xian (year 3, Team Lead 1)
  2. Lionel Bryant Handison (year 3, Team Lead 2)
  3. Thaddeus Tan Woon Siang (year 4)
  4. Sim Boon Liang (year 3)
  5. Kenneth Kwek Kai Wen (year 3, pilot)
  6. Zhang Pinren (year 4)
  7. Kang Lei (year 4)
  8. Kim Yeon-Jae (year 3)
  9. Roy Png Ling Xin (year 3)
  10. Sarah Tay Mei Qin (year 3)
  11. Ng Joo Yuan (year 3)

Visit Team MechFly at https://www.facebook.com/NUS.ME.MECHFLY/

Students who are interested in joining the team can contact Dr. Chan Woei Leong at tslcwl@nus.edu.sg.

20180409 Team Mechfly Champion At Safmc 2018 3

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