If you are a busy student like Rowan Yap, washing your car probably isn’t at the top of your to-do list. That’s one reason why the budding electrical engineer thought it would be a “cool idea” to create a robot car cleaner.

Rowan’s creation is a compact device that sits on the outside of a car or truck and automatically moves around to clean the vehicle, no human effort required. It also generates its own power to charge the battery.

While the robotic innovation is just a prototype for now, Rowan agreed it would be a welcomed convenience.  “Yep, I never wash my car,” he laughed.

The robot car cleaner was researched, developed, manufactured and tested throughout the course of Rowan’s last year of study. It will be one of many final-year projects on display when the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science holds its demonstration day on Tuesday, November 20.

The exhibition will see the students present their work to staff, students, friends, family and members of industry.

The projects - which will be marked on the day - cover a diverse range of topics and demonstrate the skills and knowledge learnt in the four-year Bachelor of Engineering (Electrical) degree. 

Electrical engineering is the science of power generation and distribution, signal processing, and analogue and digital electronics. It is an extremely diverse field, taking in electronics, computer systems, telecommunications, bioengineering, control, robotics and electrical power engineering.

“It will be great to show the result of all our hard work,” Rowan said. “At the start of my degree I thought it would be impossible to make something like this.”

To see Rowan’s robot car cleaner and the other Electrical Engineering student projects, head along to the Electrical Engineering exhibition.

The exhibition is open to the public. Entry is FREE.

WHEN: 20 November, 2012 from 1 - 4 pm
WHERE: Building EE Callaghan Campus