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The University of New Brunswick's J Herbert Smith Centre for Technology Management and Entrepreneurship has announced the winner of the RBC Product Design and Development Competition, which took place virtually on April 8 as part of the 7th Annual Engineering Design Symposium.

UNB’s annual Engineering Design Symposium gives final-year engineering students the opportunity to work together to design forward-thinking solutions for current, real-world challenges.

The J Herbert Smith Centre’s unique cross-disciplinary Product Design and Development (TME 4025) course allows students from a variety of engineering disciplines to come together to conceive, design and prototype a technical product that addresses a real market need. Under the guidance of technical leaders in industry, academia and government, teams get hands-on experience conducting engineering analyses and detailed product designs, developing tangible prototypes, validating customer needs and creating viable business plans. This annual competition, sponsored by RBC and the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of New Brunswick (APEGNB), allows the teams to showcase their final designs to the public.

The three teams participating in the eight-month program were:

• Picketa Systems: Xavier Hebert-Couturier, Maxime Dumont, Dominic Levesque and Zachary Anderson;
• V-Arm: Tram Ngo, Curtis Lough, Caitlin Pepper and Joseph Richardson; and
• Water Integrated Design & Empowerment: Tegan Aguinaga, Dalton Killorn, Emma King-Jesso and Nathan McNally.

The first-place winner was V-Arm for their virtual reality solution to assist with upper-limb rehabilitation, which has already gained interest from patients and clinicians alike. They received $3,500.

"We're thrilled to be able to offer our engineering students the unique opportunity to build and commercialize solutions to real-world market needs," said Dr. Dhirendra Shukla, chair of the J Herbert Smith Centre and Product Design and Development instructor. "I continue to be amazed at the talent within UNB engineering and am extremely proud of our TME 4025 teams for rising up to the challenge over the last eight months and creating viable and impactful solutions that are already gaining attention from industry experts and investors."

Media contact: Angie Deveau