Sol Railway Research Team (SRRT) members (MinKyo Lee (SIRA junior), Yuri Lee, and Tuhel Ahmed (SIRA sophomore)) won the second prize at the 2017 Student Railway Creativity Competition (2017학생철도창의작품전) hosted by Korean Society for Railways. SRRT is a student robotics club of Department of Railroad Integrated System Engineering (SIRA).This year’s competition theme was “4th Industrial Revolution and Smart Railway”. The 15-finalist team from various Korean universities participated in the competition held at Korea Railroad Research Institute (KRRI) at Gyeonggi-do, Uiwang.

SRRT competed with their project titled “The Airbrake for High-Speed Trains Using Shape Memory Alloys Actuator”. The project included wirelessly controlled High-Speed Train replica with a new concept of air brake similar to the one used in commercial airplanes. The air-brake mechanism was controlled using the smart material. The team designed the entire project from scratch and it took 2 months to come up with the current version of the product.

 

“It was so interesting to participate in this competition for the first time, even though there were many difficult moments” team leader of SRRT, MinKyo Lee remembers the difficult times. “I’m truly happy and grateful for working with my team members, and especially I would like to thank our supervisor, Professor Binayak Bhandari, and other professors of SIRA, who always showed us their infinite support and love.”