• Question: are there any projects that people thought were not possible but you still completed it any way ?

    Asked by gabby to Iulia, Katie, Mateusz, Ollie, Siobhan on 13 Mar 2017.
    • Photo: Iulia Motoc

      Iulia Motoc answered on 13 Mar 2017:

      I don’t think so. I always had the support I needed from my family, lecturers, or supervisor. However, last year, during my review, the chair of the panel asked me what is the point of researching grasping algorithms since this is a new topic. I had another review the week before the competition started, and he was quite impressed. So yeah, I would say I kinda had a moment like that, but it was not from one of the people that would have actually had impact over my work.

    • Photo: anon

      anon answered on 14 Mar 2017:

      I only get people who think that technology can’t do certain things and then they get impressed when it can. For example, voice recognition in Amazon Echo (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Echo) impressed many people.

      As for my own projects, I don’t think I have something that controversial yet 🙂

    • Photo: Katie Pavey

      Katie Pavey answered on 14 Mar 2017:

      That’s a really interesting question.

      In fact a lot of our projects start off ‘impossible’. My job is to try and find a compromise between what the customer wants and what our engineers think is possible. Usually this means we might change the order the car is put together, or ask the car designer to change the car design slightly.

    • Photo: Siobhan Duncan

      Siobhan Duncan answered on 15 Mar 2017:

      Yes! Great question.

      I have this terrible habit of wanting to take on these wild over-ambitious projects and I’m always getting told to tone it down!

      I designed my own communications interface for this project we were working on just for fun haha and it’s not that it wasn’t possible full stop, but that it wasn’t possible in the time that we were given.

      I’ve not yet done a project where I’ve broken the laws of physics haha, but more where I’ve managed to complete something is a time that I was told couldn’t be done 🙂 But that is because when I get told no, part of me takes it as a challenge haha

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