Saturday, August 23, 2008

Formula CSE 2008

Formula CSE, is an annual toy car racing competition held by the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Moratuwa, in which participation is required in order to pass the subject CS1960 Skill Development, a subject which is mandatory for each engineering undergraduate at the university. Each student of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering will make a toy car during the Level 1, in groups of 4-5 people which will race in the Formula CSE competition held at the end of the non-technical term.

Formula CSE competition is organized by the Level 4 students of the Department every year and the organizers will also mentor the students for a period of around 7 weeks teaching them how to build a remote controlled toy car from scratch. Formula CSE began in 2006, and the one held on 23rd August 2008 was the third annual competition.

Having participated in the first ever Formula CSE competition in 2006, as a student I was privileged to mentor a group of five talented juniors this year, who did a great job in designing one of the best cars out there. Even though my team did not become the champions, I accept the fact that we did a great piece of work.

As a member of the organizing committee I was in charge of timing each race, with the aid of a countdown timer software. In addition to that I evaluated the graphical user interface developed by each team (20 altogether) along with a panel of judges. I must say that each team has done a marvelous job and it was very hard to evaluate. The amount of effort put in was more than what we expected from an average group of 1st year students.

We are very happy and proud of what our juniors have done and hope that the Formula CSE competition will continue in it's mission of creating better and more competent engineers in the field of information technology and computing in years to come.

P.S. I will try my best to post some photographs if I happen to find any.

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