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A tale of two robots
The Robotics team at the North West University Vaal Campus aims to encourage technology-oriented people to become involved in the exciting world of automation and innovation in a fun way. With the fast pace of development in Robotics worldwide currently, we proud ourselves in the fact that we have been part of this exciting field of study since 2008 when the Robotics Interest Group was founded on our campus. Since then we have grown in leaps and bounds which includes a fully equipped Robotics lab and established relationships with a number of local as well as international Robotics organisations such as Robofest and Lego Mindstorm and Robotics interest groups such as Binary Space.
We have achieved many accomplishments over the years which include a third place in the Robotics Challenge for Engineering students held at the Robotics and Mechatronics conference hosted by the CSIR in November 2011 and a first place at the same event in the year 2012. In 2016 we took part in the national round Robofest Championships for students which focussed on vision recognition in the field of Robotics. We obtained a first and second place at this event.
On community level the Robotics team are actively involved in efforts to encourage members of the community - specifically children from local communities - to take part in Robotics activities. We support these activities by hosting, sponsoring and serving as judges at local Robotics activities, competitions and events such as the annual Lego Mindstorm Challenge and Robofest competitions for schools. At the GeeXpo event which is hosted annually by the NWU Vaal Campus, we showcase our projects and offer fun Robotics activities for the attendees to take part in. As from 2014 the NWU Vaal Campus supported the organisers of the National Robofest Championships by hosting this event on campus. The value we see in investing in young minds confirmed by our sponsorship of the tablets they need at workshops they offer at schools in the Gauteng province.
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Current activities
- Lecture room support – Robotics is used in programming courses to introduce students to the application of programming principles in the field of Robotics and automation.
- Undergraduate projects – We introduce Robotics to our Computer Science students at third year level. The Robotics team put together a task which the students need to complete within 4 weeks. The students need to use their programming skills and get an Arduino robot to perform the task successfully within a specific time limit. The tasks vary but is aimed at allowing students to explore both the construction and the programming involved in robotics.
Research
Honours – Students are allowed to choose a research topics in the field of Robotics. These students are supervised by members of the robotics team. Some of the research topics at honours level results in papers being published and are also pursued at masters level. We are involved in several post graduate research projects on topics such as the evolvement of makerspaces in South Africa, the role of robotics in education and the role of drones in the workplace.
Short courses
- Arduino for beginners – This is an 8 week course which aims to introduce participants into the construction of Arduino robots and basic programming code to manipulate these robots. Participants obtain a certificate of attendance if they complete the course activities successfully.
- Introduction to Lego Mindstorm – This is a six weeks course offered to people who are interested becoming involved in robotics at a beginners level.
Other activities
- Robofest – We take part in annual national competition and other activities.
- GeeXpo– We take part in the annual GeeXpo event where we showcase our activities and involve school children in fun robotics activities.