About Minesweeper Manchester
The Manchester Minesweeper Competition was a month-long event run by the Electromagnetic Sensing Group from the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at The University of Manchester, involving 9 schools from the Greater Manchester area. Groups of between 5 and 10 pupils from each school were tasked with building their own minesweeper robot to be entered into a series of challenges at a final competition day.
The event commenced with a workshop day held in the new Engineering Building A at the University of Manchester where the school pupils participated in two workshops: How to Build an Arduino Metal Detector; and Robot Motor and Bluetooth Control. The workshop day was bookended by talks from Julie Noonan from the Mines Advisory Group setting the context of the global landmine problem, and Ben Carter from the University of Manchester Careers Service, finishing with a series of ‘Meet The Professionals’ Q&A sessions from 7 speakers drawn from the wider engineering community.
Following the workshop day, each team was paired with undergraduate engineers from the University of Manchester who visited the schools in the period before the competition day to offer guidance on designing and building their minesweeper robot.
Competition challenges
Each school returned to the University of Manchester for a competition day where they undertook 3 challenges in the morning: a navigation challenge; a meal detection challenge; and a presentation detailing their robot build and the challenges they faced.
How well each team performed dictated the time they were allocated in the final arena challenge. This took place in the afternoon and saw the teams navigate their robot around a specially designed minescape searching for buried threats. All the schools performed really well and showed great team-working and problem solving skills. The winner on the day was Altrincham Grammar School for Boys with special mentions to St. Ambrose Barlow RC High, Salford and Co-op Academy Manchester, Blackley, winners of individual challenges in the morning session.
