Student Competitions
Hardware Competition Rules
Latest Edition: 5 September, 2023
Download Latest Hardware Competition Rules (Ver. 5.6.1)
Download CAD Files
Download Field Assembly Files
Download Game Pieces STL Files
FAQs
Discord Links
- HW Competition – General: https://discord.com/channels/930637250130223114/930638228359381085
- HW Competition – Rules: https://discord.com/channels/930637250130223114/960658347118440538
Key Dates
- TBD: Team registration closes
- Thursday March 21st 12 pm – 6 PM: Hardware room is open and students can claim their work station and start signing up for time slots on the practice board. Teams do not have to be at SoutheastCon by this time in order to compete in hardware. This is just the time where things open up and students have the option to start claiming their station and practicing.
- Friday March 22nd TBD: Hardware room is opens and teams can claim work stations and sign up for practice slots.
- Friday March 22nd TBD-10 PM: Teams can check in their robot and complete safety check. All teams must complete check in of their robot in order to compete in the hardware competition. Keep in mind that the hardware room is closed during the opening reception and so students will not be able to check in their robot during that time.
- Friday March 22nd 4 PM – 7 PM: Hardware room is closed so that everyone can attend the SoutheastCon opening reception.
- Friday March 23rd 8 PM – 9 PM: Hardware Captains meeting. Any team competing in the hardware competition must have their captain attend this meeting.
- Saturday March 23rd 8 AM – 3 PM: Hardware competition begins with the Qualifying and Semi-Final rounds.
- Saturday March 23rd Closing Banquet: Hardware competition finals round occur.
Teams must arrive at SoutheastCon with enough time for their captain to attend the hardware captains meeting and their robot to complete safety checks.
How can you start preparing for IEEE SoutheastCon 2024 at this time?
- Start fundraising.
- Find if there are grants at your university to apply for and get that out of the way.
- Ask your department if they are willing to help you with.
- Are there ways in your college or in your department to “volunteer” and getting the promise for sponsorship out of it (Help setting up the career fair or similar things).
- Look for companies in your community which might be able to help you with arts/tools/machine time/financially. start talking to them.
- Finally, reach out to your section and build a relationship. If you do your reporting to IEEE the section gets money for you. Make sure to ask how you can apply for this money to help you travel/participate in IEEE SoutheastCon 2024.
This years software competition will be a hackathon.
Rules and signup information will be posted closer to SoutheastCon 2024.
Note that nothing is finalized until it is stated in the final rules for this competition. The information above to meant to give students enough to plan for. There is a chance that the final rules of the competition may very from the information above. However, we are confident with the information above at this time and changes would be minimal.
The Hardware Design Competition is a new competition for SoutheastCon 2024.
All teams competing in the hardware competition must also enter the design competition unless they are competing in the open bracket of the hardware competition.
Simply put, this competition is to highlight the best designed robot from the hardware competition. Our goal with this competition is to provide a chance for students to tell us about their design and receive recognition regardless of how their robot performed in the hardware competition.
At this time, students can expect the following:
- Each team in the design competition will be required to submit a presentation on their design. Details of what must be in the presentation will be stated in the finalized rules.
- The presentation will be required to be submitted in advance of SoutheastCon.
- Teams will have to give an oral defense/Q&A session with judges on site at SoutheastCon.
Rules for the 2024 Circuit Design Competition will be posted closer to SoutheastCon 2024.
At this time students can expect:
- At the start of the competition, teams will be provided with a challenge and all materials needed to solve the challenge. Teams will then have a set amount of time to complete the challenge.
- Competition will occur on Friday afternoon
- Students will compete in teams
This competition has grown and so it is being restructured to accommodate more teams.
At this time students can plan on the following:
- Ethics case will be released 2-3 weeks prior to SoutheastCon. Students will then have 1-2 weeks to complete the case and submit the deliverables.
- Students will then have a 20 minute Q&A session with judges on site at SoutheastCon. Time slots will be on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday of SoutheastCon so that students can pick the one that best works for their schedule.
- There will be grad and undergrad categories. Each university can submit 1 team for undergrad and 1 team for grad. Teams are size of 3 students.
Outreach will be different from years past. This year we are going to focus on STEM outreach.
At this time students can plan for the following:
- Each university will be able to submit 1 team for the competition.
- Each team will need to submit a STEM activity. Official rules will state what age the activity should be for and any additional requirements. Students can expect one requirement will be a cost requirement (i.e. the materials for the activity must not exceed $X per child). Another known requirement will be time based (i.e. the average amount of time it should take to complete the activity must be between Y-Z). Additional requirements will be stated in the official rules.
- Our goal is to have booth at the Atlanta Science Festival and each team will lead their activity. The judges will be the kids that come to the booths. If we do this then we will provide transportation. We are also working on being able to provide each team with funding to get the supplies they need for their stem activity.
The SoutheastCon 2024 Presentation Competition encourages students to present ongoing research, capstone projects, personal projects or any topic of your choice. This competition places emphasis on the participants’ effectiveness in communicating scientific ideas to an audience. This competition is totally separate from the Eta Kappa Nu (HKN) paper presentation competition.
The research presented in this presentation competition will NOT be published in IEEE Xplore and you are at liberty to choose a topic of interest for presentation. If you already have an existing paper in EDAS for review then you are not allowed to use the same topic/content for this presentation competition but you can use a slight modification of your EDAS submitted work.
The presentation competition will have two categories: graduate and undergraduate presentations. Each category will have three awards: First, Second, and Third.
NOTE: to be eligible for participation in this competition you must submit the abstract using the link provided (TBD at this point). Your abstract should not have been used in EDAS and should only have ONE student author (NO additional co-authors are allowed).
Also note that the one-page abstract will NOT be published anywhere.
Your abstract should not be longer than one page and written using the IEEE template. Please submit your abstract using the Google Form.
Students will be required to provide a 5-minute presentation of their work at the conference during an assigned time slot. All presentations will be carried out in person at the venue.
The deadline to submit the one-page abstract is January 31st, 2024 at 11:59PM Eastern US time.
Please direct your questions in regards to the presentation competition to either Varadraj Gurupur (varadrajprabhu@ieee.org) or Bailey Heyman (bailey.u.heyman@gmail.com).
Note that nothing is finalized until it is stated in the final rules for this competition. The information above to meant to give students enough to plan for. There is a chance that the final rules of the competition may very from the information above. However, we are confident with the information above at this time and changes would be minimal.
SoutheastCon 2024 Student Promotional Design Competition Rules
Teams become automatically registered for the promotional design competition when they submit their entry into the promotional design competition.
Teams have until 12 PM on Saturday March 23rd to submit for this competition. If a team is submitting to get bonus points in the hardware competition, they will receive the bonus points within 2 hours of submitting to the promotional design competition. Therefore, it is recommended for students to submit for the promotional design competition by 10 PM on Friday March 22nd to make sure they start the hardware competition with their bonus points.