After spending the morning packing the vehicles, we arrived in Detroit at approximately 5:30 pm on Sunday. We checked in at the Mariot Courtyard and rushed to get changed for the reception. At 6:30 pm, we arrived at the reception. We had Mexican food for dinner during which speakers explained the competition schedule. Dinner was followed by a karaoke contest. Having less talent than the rejected contestants of Canadian Idol, we managed to sing a modified version of “If I had a million dollars” by the Barenaked Ladies. We came away with 3rd place! It must have been all our late night practices courtesy of the Silver Spur. It’s going to be a busy night as we all work on our presentations. We’ll be at GM University at 8 am tomorrow morning.

– Alain Boutros, Outreach Coordinator

Well, the first full day of competition is over! Most of the simulation booth was set up, and thanks to a massive stroke of good fortune and incredible forethought the dynamic simulator became fully operation! So hopefully we’ll be able to blow the socks off the judged during the project initiation event tomorrow. We’re just tuning our display tonight and should be fully ready to go.

Today was also the live modeling event. UWAFT put in a really strong performance, developing a control strategy that was 25% better than the initial control strategy that was given. The performance should put UWAFT within the top five universities, possibly in the top three.

Tomorrow’s a big day, with Project Initiation, NI, Freescale, and Mathworks presentations. Best be getting back to work.from Detroit, Over and Out.

– Matt Stevens, Team Captain

Today, we broke our record for getting to the competition early. MOST people woke up before 6 am and we got to the competition by 7:15am. That was pretty good considering some people got like 2 hours of sleep and some people, like Matt, got none.

Our first presentation, Project Initiation Approval (the important one), was at 9:40 am. We scrambled to get our whole trade show booth ready to roll, putting up the plasma screen and setting up our car simulation and webcams. The PIA presentation went really well with all our bases covered. We were able to demonstrate a good amount of our hardware for the 11 judges, and they thought it was just absolutely fantastic that we had basically a 1/65th version of the proposed vehicle working in front of us (especially with half of it working over WAN).

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6:30 pm

Well, today was the big day for Outreach. We were first to present at 8 am. The presentation went well, we’ll find out how well in a couple hours. I headed back to the hotel for a 10:30 am phone interview with Transport Canada. That also went well. So far it’s been a good day and I hope it ends that way. The other presentations, technical and controls, were also really good. After cleaning up the classroom at GM University, we headed back to the hotel for a swim.

Now, we’ve just arrived at GM’s Centerpoint Campus North for the awards ceremony. I’m walking in right now while firing this off on my blackberry.

Look for an update in 3 hours. Pray for us Waterloo…

– Alain Boutros, Outreach Coordinator

9:30 pm

We did it! University of Waterloo’s Alternative Fuels Team gets FIRST! Wow, I can’t believe it. All our hard work has paid off. I’ll write more later…it’s time to celebrate. Congratulations everyone!

– Alain Boutros, Outreach Coordinator

Well, the last day of Challenge X was much more relaxing. After a long night of some celebrations, we somehow managed to wake up, pack and leave the hotel by 8 am. We arrived at Milford Proving Grounds at 9 am and got shuttled to the Black Lake. First on the agenda was an hour of networking with the main sponsors followed by the media event. In front of all the media, we were given the key to our 2005 Chevy Equinox. Unfortunately for Matt the key was just for show.

The media event was followed by a barbeque, some vehicle demonstrations (acceleration, traction control…) and lots of pictures and interviews for the first place team!

We’re now on our way home…

– Alain Boutros, Outreach Coordinator