Mobile robotics in education — South African and international competitions

Innovations in mobile robotics, with increasing commercial and personal applications, have also seen mobile robots become accepted as fascinating learning systems and research tools. In this regard, the industrial education company Festo Didactic introduced Robotino, an autonomous mobile mechatronic learning and research system, as a standardised platform for education across the fields of engineering and information technology. This publication focuses on technical system details, and South African and international competitions supported by Festo Didactic, such as WorldSkills and RoboCup, to create motivating and challenging events for educational users of mobile robots. We present the impact of these learning systems and competitions on the training of industrially-relevant engineers.