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Future events and activities
From the University of Canterbury
The school of Mechanical Engineering is on the hunt for Final Year Project topics!
Mechanical Engineering Final Year Projects bring together design, modelling, analysis, and validation to explore complex engineering problems with real unknowns, rather than routine solutions. Each year, multiple student teams work in parallel on industry- and research-informed challenges, taking projects through to a proof-of-principle or working prototype stage and presenting their outcomes as part of a structured programme.
Strong projects offer sufficient scope for a small student team to take ownership of different work streams and involve an engaged sponsor who can provide regular guidance and an external perspective.
With the new term commencing shortly, we invite organisations interested in collaborating with our students to propose project topics.
👉 Learn more about what makes a good project and how to submit a proposal here
From MAKE│NZ-
We’ve got two events coming up, both on Monday, Feb. 16.
The first is an Extraordinary General Meeting of the New Zealand Manufacturers and Exporters Association (NZMEA) – the ‘parent organisation’ behind MAKE│NZ. You may be aware from other activities you’re involved with that all Incorporated Societies (“Associations”) have to adopt new constitutions that are compliant the new Incorporated Societies Act 2022. The NZMEA is an incorporated society, so that means us as well. Invitation to his meetings have been sent to registered members of MAKE│NZ (NZMEA) and we trust many of these will attend
The second one, and on the same day, immediately following the above at 5:30 p.m., will be our first Fireside Chat event for the year. The topic will be product design. We’ll look at the eternal conflict between Design for Functionality and Design for Manufacturing.
Speakers will be Barro de Gast, Senior Lecturer at the School of Product Design, University of Canterbury, and Jeff McDowell, Engineering Manager and Kent Stewart, R&D Manager, both at Wyma Solutions.Barro’s research centres on industrial product design, manufacturing processes, and user interaction. But Barro has also brought numerous products to market, particularly in the home and outdoor sectors. His approach integrates manufacturing processes in unique ways to develop innovative designs and enhance user experiences.
News from the world of manufacturing
•The government’s announcement yesterday of building an LNG import terminal will come as a relief to those manufacturers using natural gas as the source of their process heat. With the announcement came an LNG Fact Sheet providing the rationale for the government’s decision.
On the surface, there is a compelling argument to support this decision – on-shore gas reserves – and supplies – have been dwindling for many years and there appear to be limited expectations of a significant increase in domestic supply, irrespective of policy settings on the day.
If we just focus on the past 12 months, we can see that the recent uptick in production from McKee/Manahewa is encouraging but does not offset the steady decline from the other fields:
And, finally, based on the existing pipeline infrastructure, locating the new facility in Taranaki is a logical choice:
Having sufficient LNG supplies as a ‘firming option’ clearly was a key driver behind the government’s decision: “The LNG import facility will provide a reliable backup fuel source, reducing the impact of dry-year risk on electricity pricing and stabilising electricity costs.”
There is an underlying assumption that LNG is a better firming fuel source than the ‘dirty coal’ currently used – ‘dirty’ referring to its carbon footprint. And, indeed, at around 460–485 gCO₂-eq/kWh, LNG, when burned, is only half as bad as coal (900–1,000 gCO₂-eq/kWh). However, on a life cycle basis, methane emissions during the production of shale gas also need to be considered. During the fracking process, drilling, and transport through pipelines, methane often leaks into the atmosphere. Scientists have estimated that if more than about 2.7% of the gas produced leaks before it reaches the power plant, the climate advantage of gas over coal starts to vanish. A recent study published in nature puts the weighted average leakage of US shale gas production at 2.95%.
US shale gas will almost certainly be a (significant) part of the mix when the new import facility is operational. The government has taken decisive action to address an obvious problem. What it hasn’t done is explain how that action sits within its overall long-term energy strategy for the country.
It can’t, because it doesn’t have one.
It ignored the key recommendation from the recent Frontier report it had commissioned, which recommended that “The Crown establish an entity to take primary responsibility for securing and selling thermal fuel and firming capacity.” Such an entity would have put government in control of all firming options.
In his response during an RNZ interview this morning, Labour leader Chris Hipkins promised the release of a comprehensive energy strategy for the country prior to this year’s election. We’ll be waiting with bated breath …
Other news of interest to manufacturers
•New Year’s celebrations have been and gone, but you may still remember the images: in several of the world’s biggest cities, traditional fireworks were replaced by drone light shows
These shows are as technically challenging as they are spectacular visually. To start with, drone movements must be highly synchronised; every drone in the swarm (often 500 to 3000+ units) must operate on a perfectly synchronised clock. A delay of even a few milliseconds can ruin formations and animations. This requires highly precise GNSS (GPS/GLONASS/Galileo) timing and precision positioning. Standard GPS (accurate to ~5–10 meters) is insufficient for drone shows where units fly within 1.5–3 meters of each other. Operators use Real-Time Kinematic (RTK) GPS, which utilises a ground-based base station to correct satellite signals, achieving centimetre-level accuracy.
Flight formation algorithms use software like Blender with specialised plugins to convert 3D art into flight paths. For fireworks-like effects, the software must simulate “particle physics”—for example, calculating how “trails” of light should follow a moving drone to mimic the look of a rising rocket or a falling spark.
At the same time, the system needs some level of de-centralised logic. If one drone drifts, its neighbours should adjust slightly to maintain the overall shape without requiring central intervention. Moreover, drones are highly susceptible to wind. Wind speeds exceeding 25 – 35 km/h can make it impossible for the drones to maintain their precise formation, leading to a “ghosting” effect where the image becomes blurry.
The next challenge is communication. A robust, low-latency radio link must send real-time commands to every drone. For large swarms, this is often achieved using a mesh network – where drones relay signals – to counteract the risk of drones in the middle of the pack having their signals “shaded” by the bodies of the drones on the perimeter of the swarm.
And then there are, of course, the actual ‘fireworks’. While some drone light shows still rely on pyrotechnics, which comes with a set of its own challenges, increasingly LED lights are used to achieve the desired visual effects without the noise and air pollution created by pyrotechnics. With LEDs, the audience’s view depends on the brightness and colour of the LED lights. Achieving a vivid, firework-like brilliance that’s visible from kilometres away, especially against light-polluted urban skies, requires high-power, efficient LEDs and careful angling.
In summary, the core challenge with drone light shows is transforming a swarm of individual, fragile, GPS-dependent robots into a single, robust, fault-tolerant display system that performs with military-grade precision in unpredictable public environments. It requires a combination of aerospace engineering, robotics, computer science, and meticulous operational planning.
“Military-grade precision” being the key operative term here. The use of swarms of unmanned drones in military operations is rapidly becoming a core element of military strategy, and one may safely assume that there is ample cross-fertilisation between these drone light shows and their military equivalent.
•In psychology, the term ‘Regression’ describes “an unconscious defence mechanism where an individual reverts to behaviours, thoughts, or emotions from an earlier developmental stage to cope with stress, trauma, or anxiety.”
When applied to technology (Technological Regression), it means “a decline or loss of a society’s collective ability to maintain, operate, or advance complex systems, resulting in reduced productivity, knowledge, and quality of life”. The mothballing of the Concorde is often quoted as an example, even if it represented improved productivity and quality of life for a select few only.
But there is also deliberate technological regression, where the wisdom of deliberately walking away from a particular advanced technology is often questioned, usually with the benefit of hindsight. The political decision in Germany to abandon nuclear power generation after the Fukushima earthquake is a prominent example.
•In automotive technology, there are two recent examples of deliberate technological regression, caused by safety concerns in both cases. We’ll introduce the first one this week. In dashboard design, the knobs are back:
Well, not quite like that , but changes to the European NCAP safety protocol, published in October 2025, make it harder for cars to achieve a full five-star rating if they do not use ‘Direct physical input’ or ‘Direct physical input or Direct touch input’ for a range of key operational controls such a wipers, headlights (full beam), etc., as well as some audio, climate and door control functions:
What caused these guideline updates was growing evidence of the risks associated with the expanding use of menu-based touchscreens to control an increasing number of operational functions in modern cars. For example:
- A Swedish study found that operating basic functions in 11 modern cars took up to 4.5 times longer than in a 2005 Volvo V70
- A recent University of Washington / Toyota Research Institute study found that interacting with touchscreen menus increased lane drifting by 42%, and that when driving, users’ accuracy on the touchscreen dropped by 58% compared to when they were stationary. This suggests that the “visual-manual” search required for menus is fundamentally incompatible with the motor skills needed for steering.
The story above is a good example of the age-old design dilemma of Form vs. Functionality. Where industrial designers have complete freedom to operate, they can find the right design that balances visual and haptic attractiveness with utility, but in the case of car user interfaces in the widest sense, at least for the Chinese market what the customer wants isn’t objectively what’s best for them.
Fun facts
Staying with the topic of advanced design … https://youtu.be/u2aNFcrrG_c
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