Festo recently organised the first formal WorldSkills South Africa competition for mechatronics and mobile robotics. Following a similar format to WorldSkills International, the world’s largest international vocational skills competition, of which Festo is a founding global partner, the competition brought together some of South Africa’s most skilled young people to compete before the public and test themselves against the most demanding international standards.
Champions of the Mechatronics Worldskills SA competition, Tshwane University of Technology.
The two-day event was open to all universities, with participating institutions conducting their own internal competitions to choose their two best candidates for the challenge. With the winners set to represent South Africa at next year’s WorldSkills International competition in Germany, where they will compete against hundreds of their peers drawn from regional and national skill competitions currently held in 52 countries and regions, the teams had to show that they have what it takes to represent their country at the highest level.
They had to negotiate both known and unknown tasks specifically designed to push their knowledge and ability to the limits. After showing tremendous teamwork, communication, planning, time management and task completion abilities, in addition to meeting the strict limited timelines for the tasks, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University emerged victorious in the Mobile Robotics competition, while Tshwane University of Technology won the Mechatronics contest.
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