Successful placement in the 2023 COSIMA competition
The student team SolemSense of the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, namely Nicolas Brugger, Maren Kirste and Uwe Benkarth under the supervision of professor Peter Woias, was able to win the second place at this year's COSIMA competition at the MikroSystemTechnik Kongress 2023 in Dresden.
The VDE COSIMA competition, short for „Competition of Students in Microsystems Applications“, challenges teams of students to develop innovative uses for sensors and microsystems. For this purpose, SolemSense designed and implemented an energy-autonomous soil probe that measures the temperature gradient and water content in the soil as well as the light intensity at the surface. The probe is powered by a combination of solar panel and rechargeable battery, so it requires no power cable and no service effort for battery replacement. The collected measurement data is transmitted to a base station every 10 minutes via the LoRa radio standard. The range of applications for this energy-autonomous sensor system is thus very broad and extends from private gardens, greenhouses and farmland to parks and environmental monitoring systems.
The COSIMA competition required the construction of a functional prototype, the creation of a detailed project folder, and a convincing presentation in the competition at the MikroSystemTechnik Congress. The project had to be financed by raising sponsorships. The competition was extremely strong this year with 6 teams registered. Nevertheless, the SolemSense team was able to prevail with its innovative solution.
Their placement among the top three winners opens up the opportunity for Team SolemSense to participate in the international iCAN competition, where they will compete against other international teams with their ground probe.
The entire team is looking forward to the challenges ahead and is determined to drive the project forward.
Picture description from left to right: Uwe Benkarth, Maren Kirste and Nicolas Brugger
Contact:
Prof. Dr. Peter Woias
University of Freiburg
Department of Microsystems Engineering – IMTEK
Laboratory for the Design of Microsystems
E-Mail: woias@imtek.de
Kerstin Steiger-Merx
Representative PR/Marketing
Faculty of Engineering
University of Freiburg
Tel.: 0761/203-8056
E-Mail: steiger-merx@tf.uni-freiburg.de