Engineers declare open season on ducks

massey-university

Fri Oct 19 2007 13:00:00 GMT+1300 (New Zealand Daylight Time)

Engineers declare open season on ducks

Friday, 19 October 2007, 4:40 pm
Press Release: Massey University

Friday, October 19, 2007

Engineering students will be hunting electronic ducks in Wellington next week.

Second-year Bachelor of Engineering students from Wellington and Palmerston North campuses will compete for the “Duck for Cover” shooting trophy.

Students have to design and build electronic recognition, deactivation and communication systems.

Dr Wyatt Page from the Institute of Information Sciences and Technology says the purpose of
Duck for Cover is to give students practical experience at electronics design.

Duck for Cover is a game of fighting an “enemy” while protecting “civilians”. The game comprises a Gamekeeper, and numerous ducks of three breeds: Desperado, Donald, and Daffy.

Desperado Duck is the evil assassin who must be deactivated without hitting and deactivating
Donald and Daffy ducks, the innocent civilians and onlookers. To make things harder some of the onlooker ducks could change their identity and become Desperados.

The students’ task is to design the Gamekeeper. Each duck transmits a coded infra-red signal. The Gamekeeper must locate the duck, detect the signal, decode the identity, and if it is Desperado, transmit a signal that deactivates it.

The Bachelor of Engineering degree in Wellington offers two majors: mechatronics and multimedia systems engineering. “We call it New Zealand’s most adventurous engineering degree,” Dr Page says.

“There’s increasing demand worldwide for engineers with integrated knowledge combining traditional areas such as mechanical, electrical, electronics and control engineering with modern areas such as signal processing, software engineering, robotics and internet technologies.”

What: Twenty teams of engineering students will compete to become the best duck hunters.
When: Tuesday 23 October, 4.40pm–6.30pm
Where: The Pyramid, Entrance A, Wallace St, Massey University, Wellington

ENDS

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