Co-sponsored by Ministry of Education, Chinese Association for Sysmtem Simulation and Siemens China, the Automation Challenge Finals for college students were held in Shanghai from Aug. 18 to Aug. 22. 104 teams from 75 colleges and universities and over 320 teachers and students have been invovled in. Two teams from AHUT, led by Feng Xugang and Hu Xuefeng, joining in Design and Development Group and Engineering Applications Group, went through the links of designing, bidding, optimizing, field testing, project handover and defenses and won two Grand Prizes in the end. In total 8 colleges won the Grand Prizes in two groups competitions respectively.

413 teams and about 1500 teachers and students joined in the preliminaries held in 5 sub-divion areas around the country since the Challenge Cup started in July. AHUT teams ranked first and second at the preliminaries held in East China division and qualified for the national finals.

The Automation Challenge for the National College Students, approved by Ministry of Education, is an engineering innovative scientific competition especially designed for the students who are majoring in automation, measurement and control, process equipment and control, mechatronics and other related fields. All participating teams are supposed to complete engineering projects in the environment consisting of real industrial controllers and simulated industrial objects and to be ranked according to the final controlling efficiencies. The event has been successfully held for 7 times so far and listed as one of the competitive events funded by the State Teaching Quality and Reforming Project. Prize winners will be given priority considerations to be employed by internationally renowned enterprises including Siemens and Huawei.