The PneuDrive Challenge, an engineering student design competition that has entered its fifth year, has started 2012 with renewed enthusiasm from the sponsors as well as an eagerness from students to design engineering solutions that are relevant to the broader population of South Africa. A series of roadshows to Gauteng universities has been concluded and visits to universities of the Western and Eastern Cape will be concluded by the end of March.
Each year the sponsors, SEW-Eurodrive and Festo, suggest a theme for the competition with the intention of exposing students to the industries and technologies that they will engage with when they enter the job market. These themes have proven to be fundamental in focusing the analytical and design skills of students. This year’s theme, ‘Engineering a better life for South African Communities’, is one of the most open-ended themes to date and is expected to generate the most creative and life-changing designs in the history of the competition.
Russell Schwulst, business development manager from Festo and the newest member of the PneuDrive team, supported the importance of the 2012 theme: “With South Africa’s success rate at solving all its challenges over the last 16 years, it is becoming increasingly evident that each South African has a role to play. We cannot leave all our problems for government to solve, businesses and individuals just have to get involved.”
The 2012 competition encourages students to think about the socio-economic problems faced by less fortunate communities in South Africa, then to design an application using SEW-Eurodrive and Festo products as a means to address one of these issues. Rene Rose, general manager of communications at SEW-Eurodrive highlights: “The competition has a proud and interesting history that was generated by the need to provide a platform for engineers of the future to bring together academic theory, business reality and the latest technology.” An approach that many, if not everybody, engaged in South African business would support. Rose adds, “The engineering student competition was an idea born five years ago when we needed to bring together the importance of finding synergy between business growth and social responsibility. We have managed to build on the significance of the competition year on year, to the point where six of the eight participating universities have included the competition as part of their curriculum.”
The PneuDrive Challenge is open to third- and fourth-year mechatronic, mechanical and electronic engineering students from South African universities. The winning team receives an all-expenses paid trip to Germany where they will present their design at the head offices of SEW-Eurodrive and Festo, as well as afford their university an opportunity to claim R100 000 worth of SEW-Eurodrive and Festo products.
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