By Perla Colin
A rendering of the conceptual human powered vehicle. “El Matador,” juxtaposed with a photo of a Human Powered Vehicle Team member test driving the unit, without its shell. Photo courtesy of Annabel Weddle.
CSUN mechanical engineering students placed second at the 2020 American Society of Mechanical Engineers’ (ASME) Human-Powered Vehicle Challenge. hosted online April 25.
Originally scheduled to take place April 3-5 on the Michigan State University campus, the worldwide engineering competition and conference went virtual through Zoom, due to COVID-19. Attendance was still high, as 35 universities gathered online to show off their human-powered vehicles.
CSUN’S Human Powered Vehicle team, a senior design team made up of 23 mechanical engineering students, swept top contenders including University of Southern California, Harvard and UC San Diego in the Human Powered Vehicle Challenge. This marked the third year in a row Matadors have placed among the top three winning universities.
The challenge encourages mechanical engineering students to demonstrate their engineering, analysis and manufacturing knowledge by designing and building a sustainable, human-powered vehicle.
The CSUN vehicle. “El Matador,” had been in the works for a year as part of a two-semester senior design project. The team spent the first semester researching and designing the vehicle and the second semester building and testing it.
