Challenge

Having made the move to a turbocharged V8 in the new 488 GTB, Ferrari has unveiled its first ever turbocharged car for its Challenge series. The 488 Challenge is more powerful, has more downforce and uses less fuel than the car it replaces, but perhaps most importantly, it looks drop-dead gorgeous.

​​NASA, in conjunction with global innovation consultant organization NineSigma, has launched a new competition aimed at pushing the limits of robotic dexterity.

The next generation of trekkies is off to an inspiring start with winners recently named in the Future Engineers 3D Printing Star Trek Replicator Challenge. The budding student scientists were invited to engineer the future of food production for long space flights and manned missions on Mars.

Since 1985, the Shell Eco Marathon has pitched teams of students against each other, in an attempt to see who can travel the furthest using the energy from one liter of fuel.​ It's a simple premise which belies a complex mix of design and engineering challenges.

Having launched its i-shift dual-clutch gearbox in 2014, Volvo has now added crawler gears to the system in an attempt to broaden its appeal. Unsatisfied with a traditional launch, the company has shown off the transmission by pulling a 750-tonne load from standstill.

DARPA has announced its latest Grand Challenge to use machine-learning technologies that will allow devices to share radio bandwidth.​

One of the biggest events at the recent 2015 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) in Seattle was the first Amazon Picking Challenge, in which 31 teams from around the world were tasked with building a robot that can do the same job as an Amazon stock picker.

Google and the IEEE have launched the Little Box Challenge, offering a US$1 million first prize for an innovative electronic design to shrink power inverters down from their current bigger-than-a-bread-box size to something less than the size of a small laptop.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission, in response to the massive proliferation of illegal robocalls, has announced a US$50K prize for a solution to the problem of blocking robocalls.