Michigan Tech Hosts Winter Mini-baja Invitational
Mini Baja® consists
of three regional competitions that simulate real-world engineering design
projects and their related challenges. Engineering students are tasked
to design and build an off-road vehicle that will survive the severe punishment
of rough terrain and in the East competition—water.
The object of the competition
is to provide SAE student members with a challenging project that involves
the planning and manufacturing tasks found when introducing a new product
to the consumer industrial market. Teams compete against one another to
have their design accepted for manufacture by a fictitious firm. Students
must function as a team to not only design, build, test, promote, and
race a vehicle within the limits of the rules, but also to generate financial
support for their project and manage their educational priorities.
All vehicles are powered by
a standard ten horsepower engine donated by Briggs & Stratton Corporation.
For over twenty-years, the generosity of Briggs & Stratton has enabled
SAE to provide each team with a dependable engine free of charge. Use
of the same engine by all the teams creates a more challenging engineering
design test.
Recently Michigan Tech hosted
their annual Winter Mini-baja Invitational at the Keweenaw Research Center.
Teams from all over Michigan showed up to have some fun in the snow and
work some bugs out of their cars. See the video for highlights.
4/1/02
