In fact, visitors to Canada's largest education and training event (October 13-16 at Place Bonaventure) will be able to find Polytechnique in two locations: at the school's own booth 237 and as part of the technology exhibition of the Ministère du Développement économique et régional et de la Recherche du Québec (MDERR) at booth 319.

Visitors to École Polytechnique's own 19-m2 booth - No. 237 - will be able to get a close-up look at the engineering students' Formula SAE race car, cargo plane and wheeled robot. For its part, the MDERR technology exhibition will display six soccer-playing robots and a Mini Baja all-terrain vehicle (ATV). The student-members of these high-tech groups hail from all of the school's engineering disciplines and levels and are working to add value to their future engineering careers by taking part in hands-on activities that hone their technical knowledge and project-management skills.

At Polytechnique's booth 237
Formula SAE: 2002 Éclipse accelerates from 0 to 100 km/h in 4.1 seconds!

Polytechnique students have been one-upping themselves year after year since the 1990s in their resourcefulness at designing high-performance Formula SAE racing cars.

The single-seater 2002 model of their Éclipse racing car was built to compete in the annual Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) competition, which includes both static inspection and dynamic testing categories. The car's design and its compliance with safety standards are important elements in the judging. Students are also evaluated on their knowledge, manufacturing processes and ability to design a prototype for less than US$25,000. Finally, the car is subjected to a series of dynamic tests to judge its acceleration, handling, manoeuvrability and endurance. This increasingly popular competition attracts more than 100 teams every year.

The Formula SAE-Poly team raced its 2002 Éclipse to 14th position in the overall standings, with 125 teams in competition that year. The 227-kg race car, equipped with a Suzuki GSX-R 600-cc motorcycle engine, can reach speeds of 200 km/h.
 
Cargo plane: Lord of the Wing flies high

Lord of the Wing, a remote-control aircraft designed and built by École Polytechnique's SAE Avion-Cargo team, won first place in the Regular Class at the 2004 SAE Aero Design West Competition held this past June 18-20 in Fort Worth, Texas.

This main challenge of this SAE competition is to fly a radio-controlled aircraft designed in accordance with very strict rules set by the organizers and able to make a complete flight (takeoff, execution of a flight circuit, landing) and to carry the most extra weight.

Requirements for competing in the Regular Class included the use of an OS.61 FX engine with an unmodified muffler. Lord of the Wing, weighing 3.6 kg, lifted a 15.4-kg load to win the first-place trophy. There were 44 teams from 37 universities in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Venezuela and Australia competing in the 2004 SAE Aero Design West Competition.

It was the second time in 10 years that a Polytechnique team -- and by the same token a Québec university -- won first prize in the competition.

Wheeled robot: SpinoS, totally autonomous

Polytechnique's SAE Robotics team has innovated by creating several robots with unique features in mechanical architecture, electric components and intelligence.

SpinoS is a fully autonomous, differential-speed wheeled robot. It works with a series of sensors that detect its position in space and guide it to make the appropriate movements. These sensors allow the robot to detect, with the aid of a sender system and infrared sensor, the objects to be picked up. SpinoS is the fourth generation of mobile robots designed and built by Polytechnique's SAE Robotics team.

In competitions, SpinoS must succeed in three events: pure speed, obstacles and object retrieval. The first event consists of going through the track as fast as possible; in the second, the robot must get past an obstacle (double-inclined surface) placed randomly on the track; in the third, it must pick up billiard balls placed on the track. After every event, the robot must stop automatically at the finish line.

At MDERR's technology pavilion, booth 319
Robofoot: more agile than ever

A brand-new technology group at Polytechnique designs autonomous soccer-playing multi-robot systems. This new project aims to promote and popularize the sciences among people of all ages. "That's why we will be bringing our six Robofoot robots to the Montréal Education, Training, Career Fair. We will be showing visitors what they can do," says the Robofoot Group's team leader, Julien Beaudry.

The Robofoot Group, which works out of the Mechatronics Laboratory in Polytechnique's Department of Electrical Engineering, gives engineering students at all levels the chance to get involved, through the game of soccer, in research and development projects in the field of multi-agent mobile robotics systems. The group's primary goal is to enter the first-ever Québec/Canadian team in the Robot World Cup Soccer Games -- also known as the RoboCup.

Group members are currently designing their next generation of Robofoot robots. The newest players are more agile than ever, but the students are still working on making them lighter, which will further enhance their performance.

Mini Baja : a little endurance fiend

Equipped with a 10-hp snowblower motor that can power it to speeds of 61 km/h, and able to  handle jumps of up to five feet in the air, the Mini Baja is an ATV designed and built to handle the absolute worst in driving conditions -- very steep slopes, repeated bumps and obstacles, mud holes, snow, etc. -- in competitions that attract the best North American universities.

In June 2003, the Poly team won the event's most important trial, the endurance race at the Midwest Mini Baja Competition in Troy, Ohio. It also led all Canadian teams in the overall standings, finishing fourth among the 120 entrants. The previous year, despite a mechanical problem, École Polytechnique's team finished high in the design category (7th among 108 participants).

This year, the Poly's Mini Baja team of 10 mechanical, chemical and industrial engineering students was determined to finish on the podium. Together, the students devoted some 4,000 hours to designing and building two Mini Baja ATVs, one of which is amphibious, to compete in the East SAE Mini Baja Competition this past spring in Bromont. The Polytechnique team finished second in the overall standings.

Formula SAE: http://www.fsae.polymtl.ca
Cargo plane: http://step.polymtl.ca/~cargo
Wheeled robot: http://www.saerobot.polymtl.ca
Robofoot: http://www.polymtl.ca/robofoot
Mini  Baja: http://www.minibaja.polymtl.ca

Founded in 1873, École Polytechnique de Montréal is one of Canada's leading engineering institutions, in terms of both teaching and research. It is the largest engineering school in Québec as far as its student population and the scope of its research activity are concerned. École Polytechnique provides instruction in 11 engineering specialties and is responsible for more than one-quarter of university research in engineering in Québec. The school has 220 professors and nearly 6,000 students. Its operating budget is $72 million, in addition to a $40-million research and infrastructure fund. Polytechnique is affiliated with Université de Montréal.

Information: 
Chantal Cantin, Director
Communications and Public Relations
École Polytechnique de Montréal
Tel. (514) 340-4711, ext. 4970