South African robotics conference highlights collaboration, capital and competitions

Citation

(2012), "South African robotics conference highlights collaboration, capital and competitions", Industrial Robot, Vol. 39 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/ir.2012.04939eaa.006

South African robotics conference highlights collaboration, capital and competitions

Article Type: News From: Industrial Robot: An International Journal, Volume 39, Issue 5

The 4th Robotics and Mechatronics Conference of South Africa (RobMech 2011) was held on November 23-25, 2011, in Gauteng, South Africa. The conference kicked off with the presentation of the ground-breaking Robotics Strategy of South Africa initiative.

The strategy aims to develop domestic human capital to foster coordinated research, applications, and innovations in robotics, with resulting impacts on the global competitiveness of South African industrial sectors. The establishment of a National Robotics Centre was proposed as the hub to implement these objectives.

The key industry areas for robotics in South Africa, a country with vast mineral resources, are: mining, flexible manufacturing, medical/health care, marine/underwater robotics, defence and security robotics, and agricultural robotics. Mobile and modular robotics that are currently being utilitized in these various application areas offer significant enabling technologies.

Since 1999, according to the 2011 World Robotics Industrial Research Report, there have been recorded sales in South Africa of 2,100 industrial robots, all imported. About 70 percent of the total robot supply is in the automotive sector, and in 2010, welding comprised the largest application, with 42 percent of the total supply.

Nine universities throughout South Africa provide research in advanced robotics and mechatronics – University of Cape Town, Stellenbosch University, Tshwane University of Technology, University of KwaZulu-Natal, University of Pretoria, University of Johannesburg, University of the Witwatersrand, Central University of Technology, and the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University – with representatives from these universities comprising the majority of the 25 presentations given at RobMech (Figure 3).

The conference papers covered the topics of mining, navigation and control, robot kinematics and dynamics, bio-robotics, and robots and automation. The winning paper was entitled, “Creating three-dimensional thermal maps” and discussed a method for generating 3D maps of mines with thermal imaging texture from a robotic platform.

Figure 3 RobMech 2011 published proceedings

A highlight of RobMech 2011 was the Mobile Robot Competition, sponsored by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research Centre for Mining Innovation and National Instruments. The Competition aims to promote mining robotics, particularly gold, in South Africa and therefore, all the tasks in the competition mimic some form of a task that can be automated in an underground autonomous mine of the future. The Competition was open to both undergraduate and postgraduate students.

Figure 4 University of Pretoria’s robot won the 2011 Mobile Robot Competition

The Mobile Robot Competition consisted of five tasks, to be completed in any order, as many of the five as possible, in a specially constructed arena of approximately 5×5 m. The tasks could be executed via blind teleoperation (remote control), but having a human operator incurred a 50 percent penalty for three of the tasks. Autonomous operation was therefore preferable, awarding double points.

The winner of the 2011 Mobile Robot Competition was the University of Pretoria which successfully performed more than half the tasks (Figure 4).

RobMech 2012 will take place November 26-30, 2012 in Gauteng, South Africa. Further information on RobMech can be found at: www.robmech.co.za/