From 2 to 8 September, about ten ENSTA Bretagne student engineers were at Yverdon-les-Bains, in Switzerland, for the 6th edition of the HydroContest competition. For the competition where the aim was to imagine eco-friendly ships of tomorrow, the ENSTA Bretagne team was awarded 3rd place in the “Long Distance Race” challenge.
In 2019, the Breton team won 3rd place in the « Long Distance Race » . This was an endurance challenge.
An international competition
Over a week, 10 teams (or about 150 students) from 6 countries went head-to-head on the Yverdon-les-Bains lake in Switzerland:
- ENSTA Bretagne (France)
- The University of Toulon - SeaTech (France)
- The Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (Switzerland)
- The School of Engineering and Architecture, Fribourg (Switzerland)
- The School of Management and Engineering, Vaud (Switzerland)
- University College London (Great Britain)
- The Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture (Croatia)
- The University of Rijeka (Croatia)
- The NorwegianUniversity of Science and Technology (Norway)
- The YildizTechnicalUniversity (Turkey)
The aim of the competition is simple: sail your boat as quickly and as long as possible for the lowest energy consumption
Using the same electric motor, the teams worked for a year to design and create the most innovative boats. The only restrictions to respect concerned the maximum dimensions (2.5m X 2.5m X 2m) and the energy provided by the battery (7 Ah).
A student organized 6th edition
This new edition was rather different this year as the organizer was no longer the HYDROS Foundation which had created and organized this event for the past 5 years.
The 2019 edition became « HYDROCONTEST-X ». It was organized by three Swiss schools (the HEIA-FR, the HEIG-VD and the EPFL) with the help of the Hydros Foundation and the town of Yverdon-les-Bains.
This new organization brings a few changes, one of which this year concerns the selection of the winners. Indeed, the participants, as well as competing in their teams, also act as judges, with a person from each team forming the race committee which changes daily.
The ENSTA Bretagne team
For this new edition, the team was back with two boats : one in the « Mass Transport” category, the other in the “Light Boats” category.
The two boats were entirely designed and made on site at ENSTA Bretagne. The team spent many hours over several months in order to perfect the existing boats (used during previous competitions).
This year, modifications were made to the embedded electronics and the (3D printed) propellers. These innovations were tested over the year on the campus test basin and on a lake near Brest.
The team comprised students in the 2nd and 3rd years of engineer training. Some of them opted to take this further and chose to do “Offshore and Naval Architecture” and others “Autonomous Robotics”. Thus, the team members had different yet complementary profiles
ENSTA Bretagne placings
- In 2019
- 3rd in the « Long Distance Race » category
- In 2016 :
- 1st in the « Heavy Boats » category
- 2nd in the “Light Boats” category
- In 2015 :
- 3rd in the « Long Distance Race »
- In 2014 :
- 1st "HYDROcontest Efficiency"
- 1st "HYDROcontest Design"
- 1st "HYDROcontest Long-distance Race"
To follow the ENSTA Bretagne team and find out more about the HydroContext-X
