A team of four students from Central University of Technology, Free State (CUT) won the 2012 Siemens Cyber Junkyard Competition at the Misty Hills Country Hotel in Muldersdrift on 16 October 2012 for developing cutting-edge innovative engineering designs.   

The team is part of the research group from Evolvable Manufacturing Systems (RGEMS) research group in the school of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering that walked away with the winning prizes valued at R 90 000-00 of equipment from Siemens and Lappkabel for the school,  an iPad and exciting training opportunity  at Festo worth R 12 000 for each member.  Festo is the leading world-wide supplier of automation technology and the performance leader in industrial training and education programmes.   This year’s project, which was in line with the industry trends, provided universities with an opportunity to showcase their capacity and creativity for developing cutting-edge engineering designs- a concept that helped to bring industry and education closer together.  The competition expected that teams to showcase technology at work in the form of a warehouse stacking system.   

CUT team was able to demonstrate how the system could produce orders in sequence from the exit conveyor with particular focus on simplifying the warehouse solution, identifying and stacking blocks from a conveyor. These warehouse solutions have become part of modern business despite being perceived complex and mathematical.   Among the other universities that participated were: University of Cape Town (UCT), University of Johannesburg (UJ), North-West University (NWU), Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU), Tshwane University of Technology (TUT), Durban University of Technology (DUT), Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT), as well as the Copper Belt University of Zambia. These teams learnt a number of concepts and applied them to complete their respective projects in an array of fields such as system integration, machine automation, position and motion control, energy efficiency, mechanical and electrical safeguarding, aesthetic design as well as presentation and marketing strategies. 

 “Competitions of this nature, provides an exciting way for students to apply their theoretical knowledge, and also goes a long way in helping the country to meet the demand for the technologist, technicians and engineers of the future who have the practical skills and applied knowledge of concepts and equipment that make them unhesitatingly effective, creative, innovative and productive in the modern working environment.” said Prof. Herman Vermaak, team manager and the Director of the School of Electrical and Computer Systems Engineering at CUT’s Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology.   Some of the criteria elements used to decide the winning team were function, speed, efficiency, safety, innovation and marketing effort.   Lerato Moroane, one of the team members, conveyed the team’s appreciation for the support they have received from the Centre for Rapid Prototyping Manufacturing (CRPM) at CUT and for providing the gripper fingers used in the project. 

Pictured are CUT’s winning team members, Johan Niemann, MTech in Electrical Engineering; Michael Ngandu, BTech in Electrical Engineering; and two final year students in the National Diploma Computer Systems Engineering programme Japie Janse van Rensburg, and Lerato Moroane. Dr Nicolaas Luwes, Team Supervisor and Lecturer in the School of Electrical and Computer Systems Engineering accompanied the team to Milderdruft. Back: Prof. Herman Vermaak.