ETH students’ focus projects count as two semesters of practical experience across all areas of mechanical engineering – from traditional vehicle and engine construction to medical technology and robotics. “It’s an opportunity for us to put our ideas and what we learn in lectures into practice,” says Marco Job, one of 100 or so Bachelor’s students who have spent the past 9 months working on a total of 12 different projects. Focus projects are offered to students in their fifth and sixth semesters by the Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering. Supervised by professors as well as doctoral students and postdocs, the students are tasked with developing their ideas into a finished product. They must also master project and time management, marketing and attracting sponsors.
Developing an electric motorbike
For the
Ethec
focus project, Job’s team set out to develop a fast and nimble e-motorbike that can cover up to 250 kilometers before it needs to be recharged. It’s worth noting that these students wanted to develop their e-motorbike from scratch, using as few finished components as possible. “I think I know every single component back to front – including the 1,200 battery cells, each of which we have to monitor and program individually,” says team member Samuel Renggli with a grin.
His team has 16 members in all, including two students from the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK) and another from the ETH Department of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering (D-ITET). What’s special about the team’s motorbike is that it has a motor on each of the two wheel hubs. The students hope this will provide better acceleration, and they want to recuperate energy at the front wheel when braking.
