For the third consecutive year Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute hosts students of technical universities of Ukraine in the laboratories of the Department of Applied Hydroaeromechanics and Mechanotronics of the Mechanical Engineering Institute. This year the Summer School lasted from June, 13 to 19. For the first time, the program of the school included the work with mobile platforms, which have an electric drive with programmable control. It was this circumstance that caused the working Saturday and the half-working Sunday.
The purpose of the school was to form students with their own mechatronic view, who will not only determine the directions of development of modern automation and manufacturing techniques, but will themselves have the experience of creating even small, but their own mechatronic systems. Like last year, the honors of the school were reports “Industry 4.0” and “Bioprototypes of the latest technology”, kindly represented by the head of the department of didactics Yevgenyi Sergyoevych Ryzhenko. The “Industry 4.0” platform illustrates how the artificial intelligence of robots and mechanisms becomes a feature of corporate groups in the production tasks. Direction “Biomechanics” copies natural prototypes in mechatronic creatures, which mimic a butterfly, dolphin, ants in an antler. But for the students of the school, the most interesting is the process, as mechanics acquires signs of creatures through management algorithms. It is the formation of a single mechanics and information system that allows a mechanical dragonfly to hunt for prey, and the ants form a common goal and form a “mechanical co-operation” to move a super-heavy load. The most valuable conclusion: learn – and the complex will become clear, and you will find your professional way of a specialist in any business.
In the 16 vacancies this year there were 24 applications from 8 universities. Due to the “unflappable” experience of conducting the past school, when the students of Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute were left out of sight, 4 places were reserved for the best representatives of the organizing department. Another 12 students from the Universities of Vinnytsia, Lviv, Kharkiv, Odessa and the Kyiv National University of Technology and Design have found the competition on the results of the homework. School Coordinators O.V. Uzunov and O.P. Gubarev updated the plan of the school for all 6 days with almost 30-minute precision. The solution of one task was gradually converted to the original data for the next, the pneumatic circuit acquired electroreal and sensor control, the trajectory of the mobile platform movement received elements of uncertainty. To the usual work of mechatronics, the conditions were added: what about the “A” or “B” and how to put it in the control algorithm?
This year's school can be distinguished by the extraordinary integrity of the listeners at all stages of the work. It is this attitude of the school due to the full implementation of the program and the successful solution of the latter control task. Compared to previous years, the team of teachers, and a group of assistants showed a higher level of professional training. Teachers of the school Alyona Muraschenko, Oksana Ganpantsurova and Konstantyn Belikov were impressed with the quality and speed of the graduation work, which allowed 2 hours before the certificates to be handed over to all the students. During classes, Indian students, attending the Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute traineeship in the direction of “Mechatronics”, attended the school. Suddenly the school turned out to be “open” – almost every day the classes were attended by entrants who came to our university.
On the last day, the collaboration of the students' assistants and students of the school acquired signs of team competition – barely the assistants had time to evaluate the options for the proposed solutions, as the listeners provided even more interesting and unbiased solutions. The final stage was solving the tasks that were independently promising.
It was a little sad to leave the laboratories with so many unresolved problems, which is why there was a proposal to make the school two weeks in the next year: the basic level and the level of increased complexity. The mechatronic community of students received new supporters, and the All-Ukrainian Olympiad is a powerful competitor.