After a successful first year, sponsors SEW Eurodrive and Festo have once again committed to sponsor the PneuDrive Challenge engineering student competition.
The aim of the competition is to show innovation in the field of mechatronic design. It is also part of the sponsors’ contribution towards making a difference to the skills shortage in South Africa by giving students the latest technology in drive engineering and pneumatics to work with.
The competition was launched in Johannesburg last month and eight universities were invited to participate. This year’s participants include last year’s winner, Stellenbosch University and the runners up, University of Pretoria. Other participants include Wits University, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, University of the North West and Cape Peninsula University of Technology. University of Johannesburg and University of KwaZulu-Natal have also been selected to participate for the first time.
The competition is aimed at third- and fourth-year students in the mechanical, electronic and mechatronic engineering fields of study. A unique feature of the competition is that most universities have been able to incorporate it into their design curriculum.
“Last year we gave students carte blanche to design whatever they wanted; the only restriction was in the products they had to use, which was limited to certain SEW Eurodrive and Festo products,” comments Ute Bormann, GM of sales and marketing at SEW. This year, however, the competition has taken a different approach by setting stricter design parameters. All participants will be tasked with designing a pick-and-place application, although it can be in any industry.
The 2009 competition also places emphasis on energy efficiency, with teams having to include an energy calculation as part of the project. “I think this is standard procedure in light of the limited energy resources we are facing not just in South Africa, but all over the world,” says Bormann.
“In the 2008 competition we received very creative ideas, with the winner designing an automated dart throwing robot. But feedback from the majority of the institutions was that it took too long to come up with a concept, so we decided to give them boundaries this year to make it easier for them to select a project,” explains Bormann.
“From the onset, one of our ideas was to create enthusiasm for what our products can do, and to give students a chance to test drive the products. We wanted to keep with this tone and so the restrictions are purely there for guidance. We would like to see creative designs from the students. Last year was proof that this country has enough young creative minds who can think outside the box,” enthuses Adrian Buddingh, engineering manager at Festo and one of the PneuDrive team members.
The PneuDrive team will be having road shows at the various participating universities during March and April, and final submissions for the competition are due at the end of June. The winning team will be sent on an all expenses paid trip to Germany and the university will receive R100 000 worth of equipment.
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