TEDI-London Summer School

The Engineering & Design Institute London (TEDI-London) is a collaborative, design‐led engineering provider co-founded by the three PLuS Alliance partners – Arizona State University, King’s College London and UNSW Sydney.

TEDI-London’s Summer School is their annual international design sprint, welcoming their founding partners’ students as well as other students in full-time higher education. The students spend three weeks immersing themselves in a set topic on its Canada Water campus. This year’s theme imagined the future of Canada Water, centred around the global challenges of transport. The challenge: how to provide seamless, safe, net zero, connected, cost-effective, accessible and reliable transport solutions for the community, from young to old, and including visitors to the area.

First place: Urban Dynamics

Project:

The team developed a design for the new Canada Water high street, which will run between Canada Water and Surrey Quays stations. Their design was informed by their in-depth investigation of the effects of new infrastructure on the flow of people, cyclists, and traffic. With British Land intending to keep the high street a car-free zone, the group used their research to design effective systems to safely enable the movement of both pedestrians and cyclists in the area.

The team found that accidents between pedestrians and cyclists in shared areas are 50 times more likely than road collisions involving cars. As such, they recognised the need to keep the two high street user types separate from one another as much as possible. Key features of the design included flexible infrastructure such as bollards, seating areas, and lighting that can be moved to allow for multiple layouts, as well as flexible LED light cycle lanes that allow for re-routing of cyclists along the high street during peak times, or when more space is needed for community events. The group proposed that British Land could use both real-time and predictive data to determine how the area could be set up at any given time.

Students:

Natasha McMillan – Global Design Engineering, TEDI-London
Cody West – Engineering, UNSW
Farhan Shafiq – Engineering, UNSW
Flynn Lambrechts – Engineering/Computer Science, UNSW
Hamish Gallaway – Engineering/Commerce, UNSW

Second place: Smart Cart

Project:

Hoping to help the local residents of Canada Water navigate the new car-free areas with ease, the Smart Cart team designed a robotic system to allow users to transport large quantities of shopping from the local supermarket and high street retailers to their homes without the need for a car. Featuring sensors that allow the robotic trolleys to follow at a one metre distance behind the user, and a unique QR scanner to prevent them from following the wrong person, the team’s solution allows local residents to have their shopping follow them throughout the Canada Water area.

In addition, the team implemented a GPS system into each trolley so that they can automatically return themselves to designated trolley depots after use. As well as building their working prototype, the team designed an app as part of the system, allowing users to book and pay for their trolley using their mobile phone, check how long they have been using it for, and find out further information.

Students:

Visha Bosamia – Global Design Engineering, TEDI-London
Anish Gupta – Engineering, UNSW
Anjally Sasitharan – Engineering/ Commerce, UNSW
Eugenia Cheung – Industrial Design, UNSW
Yusra Khan – Engineering, UNSW
Boubacar Diallo – Arts, ASU

Third place: Digital Playground

Project:

Intending to enhance the new high street’s appeal to as many users as possible, this team designed a ‘digital playground’ to use projectors wired into lamp posts which display adverts, games, art and cycle lanes onto the ground.

With high streets becoming less used in recent years, they hoped to make the new Canada Water high street feel like more of an experience for users – somewhere they would want to return to again and again. To further help achieve this, they implemented checkpoints at regular intervals along the high street where visitors can scan either a physical or digital card – depending on their preference – linked to a mobile app. Regular visitors can build up loyalty points and redeem rewards, such as money off local shops and restaurants, via the app. This not only encourages return visits, but also encourages users to support the local businesses in the area.

Students:

Feilian Pang, Global Design Engineering, TEDI-London
Shefeen Khoda, Global Design Engineering, TEDI-London
Gemma Moore – Engineering/Biomedical Engineering, UNSW
Isabella Schlacher – Medical Science, UNSW
Jie Yang – Design, UNSW
Kelsey O’Grady – Engineering, UNSW

Positive feedback

The EIB prize was an excellent initiative and incentive for the 53 students that took part. During their three-week long design sprint, this diverse group of students from London, Sydney and Arizona worked in teams on this engineering challenge, hearing from leaders and experts who introduced key topics and laid out challenges and concepts for consideration and application at Canada Water. The competition for the EIB prize money was introduced during our first on-campus week and motivated the students to push right to the finishing line.

It was a fantastic finale to three weeks of hard work, industry input, learning and collaboration. TEDI-London was grateful to be able to send so many of them away at the end of their time with us with a considerable financial reward, as well as a real sense of achievement and camaraderie.

Judy Raper
Dean and CEO
TEDI-London