The UP Robot School, which started in 2021, is a joint initiative between the EBIT Faculty, and the University’s Unit for Community Engagement and the Department of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering (EECE). It was initiated by EBIT lecturer, Prof. Tania Hanekom, as a platform to allow EBIT students to serve the community by presenting a fun Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education activity to high school learners.
All EBIT students have to complete a JCP 203 module in their second year of study which requires students to execute a community project that benefits the underprivileged. Robotics was selected due to the fact that most STEM programs are based on robotics and the Robot School is therefore a project that teaches high school learners, mainly from grades 8 to 11, how to build robots from scratch in just eight lessons. The lessons are offered to the students free of charge.
The senior EECE students who provided training for the second-year community-based teams were volunteers who had a passion for the project and wanted to gain practical experience.
PDBY spoke to Pieter Roodt, who is the appointed project manager for the initiative. Roodt and Prof. Hanekom agree that the project was a success in 2021 even though they experienced certain challenges such as “a shortage of resources”. Fortunately, they have managed to secure various sponsorships and have partnered with Microrobotics and RS Components to help supply the components required as well as provide resources for presenting the course. However, other contributions are still welcome.
Roodt also expressed that the initiative has a total number of five fronts that try to uphold UP’s measures towards minimising climate change. One of the fronts is requiring robots made by the learners to be returned so that they can be reused by the following year’s learners.
The Robot School has also gained additional EBIT community schools for the year, including the Drone school and Sensor school. The initiative was started to draw more learners into STEM industries as South Africa is in dire need of persons in this industry and they hope more learners will partake in it this year.
Roodt stated that the Robot School started on 23 April and will run untill 10 September.
Image: provided
