ITS Arizona is an annual sponsor of the Best Future Transportation System award for the Engineers Week Future Cities Competition. This annual event encourages middle school students in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) by presenting a set of technical challenges over a four-month season that each must address, culminating at a regional finals event. The technical challenge facing the students this year was solid waste management. Students from schools throughout the state presented creative and innovative solutions for addressing this challenge that all communities face.
This year’s winner of the Best Future Transportation System award was submitted by Luis Olmos, Jorge Zamudio, Nery Sanchez, Andrew Bon and Brandon Castellanos from Smoketree Elementary in Lake Havasu City. The students were supported by their sponsor teacher Ms. Fatima Mu and their technical mentor Mr. Jeremy Abbott. In addition to addressing the management of solid waste in their future city, the team envisioned a future transportation network of electrically powered aerial “flying” automobiles. The real innovation being proposed by the team comes from the methods designed for generating, collecting and storing the energy required to power the transportation system. The student “engineers” described their transportation system as follows:
“Our city is futuristic and innovative. In our city we have only electric cars that release no pollution. Solar panel energy cars, electric battery cars and flying cars. We have soccer balls that generate energy when they are kicked. How this works is that the ball has a chip in it and we put the balls in a special machine that collects the energy…we also have roads that have pressure plates that when a car drives over it the plate gets energy.”
ITS Arizona recognizes and congratulates the efforts of all the teams that participated in the 2015-2016 Engineers Week Future Cities Competition…the future of Arizona truly looks bright.
