By Gosego Phutieagae

A team of young engineers from the North-West University’s (NWU’s) Potchefstroom Campus is fine tuning their robot ahead of the National Robotics Competition taking place in Cape Town.

The team, who call themselves the St331 Soarers, qualified for the national event after placing second at the regional event held in February for most innovative robot design.

The National Robotics Competition is open to robotics enthusiasts from high schools and universities and is aimed at honing their skills in vertical spindexer mechanisms.

The NWU team’s robot featured an innovative vertical spindexer mechanism, which is a rotating device that sorts, stores and shoots game artifacts into a shooter. The system loads multiple artifacts at once and uses colour sensors with servo indexing to select specific colours during matches.

While other teams reported accuracy problems due to lighting changes, the St331 Soarers’ system maintained consistent performance throughout the regional heats.

Team members are currently conducting tests on the spindexer and verifying shot consistency before the national competition. They are also refining their programming using a modular state-machine setup in the hope of winning the title. The team thanked Prof Gunther Drevin, Heystek Grobler and the NWU for establishing the robotics programme and providing coaching.

"Without their vision and guidance, we would not have had the opportunity to explore robotics, let alone qualify for the national stage," the team said.

Team St33l Soarers with their coaches