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Christine Juta Scoops NESAC Finals Second Prize

Christine JutaChristine Juta scooped the second prize at the National Engineering Students Awards Competition (NESAC) 2017 Edition held at the Cresta Lodge in Harare on 4 August.

Christine Juta scooped the second prize at the National Engineering Students Awards Competition (NESAC) 2017 Edition held at the Cresta Lodge in Harare on 4 August.

Tatenda Nyahwai of the University of Zimbabwe  won the first prize for his presentation: Manufacture of graphite Crucibles Using Zimbabwean raw materials.

Christine Juta, a final year Electronic Engineering student won the first prize in the HIT 2017 Pre -NESAC Finals held on 14 June.

Her  project is entitled – "Development of a test rig for automated driving test track". In this test rig for automated driving test, LASER diodes produce unidirectional beams that will be superimposed on the road markings on a dedicated test track. The main objective is to minimize the role of the human instructor in determining the result of a driving test. Each LASER diode corresponds to a light dependent resistor (LDR). Once the motorist obstructs the LASER beam, the light dependent resistor (LDR) detects no light and the corresponding microcontroller pin goes low. This would mean the motorist has either failed to manoeuvre in alley docking, failedto complete the hill start, failed to successfully complete parallel parking or failed to correctly observe the traffic light. Any of which implies the motorist has failed the driving test. Should each stage be completed successfully, the motorist is permitted to proceed to the next stage.

These results will be transmitted serially, via USB to TTL cable. A C# application, developed using Visual Studio, provides the Graphic User Interface, which enables the VID official to observe the progress of the test in real time. The electronic circuits were designed with the computer aided design tools Proteus 8.5 and Kicad. The microcontroller software was written in C language using MikroC PIC development software.