In a first of its kind, the biennial international BRICS Skills Challenge 2020 took place in a virtual online format, and Nelson Mandela University student Jacques Welgemoed marked the occasion with a memorable podium finish for the country.
Mechatronics master’s degree student Welgemoed, 23, mentored by Damian Mooney from MandelaUni Autonomous Operations, represented SA in the challenge and received a joint second place, with Temasek Polytechnic of Singapore taking top honours.
A total of 85 participants from 12 countries took part in a seven-day drone operating camp and challenge hosted by Copter Ex of Moscow, Russia, late in July.
But before he appeared on international platforms, Welgemoed started as volunteer intern with the MandelaUni Autonomous Operations (MAO) group in early 2019.
Mooney said he had shown a strong aptitude for software coding and drone development and had subsequently been selected to represent the university and SA at the WorldSkills challenge in Kazan, Russia, in 2019, where he achieved a third place behind Russia and China.
“Ideally a new student would have had the opportunity to represent SA this year, but with limited training time due to Covid it was decided to give Jacques the opportunity to compete again, this time achieving a silver,” Mooney said.
Welgemoed described the Skills Challenge as fun and a great introduction to autonomous micro aerial vehicles.
“It was interesting to be able to write a programme at home and fly a drone with that programme in a different country,” he said.
“It provided valuable experience working with software relevant to my research topic and the instructors provided helpful feedback and advice with regard to this.”
The participants were taught the finer points of drone programming and autonomous indoor navigation in an online classroom before being tutored individually by CoEx personnel to bring all participants up to a similar level of competence.
Over four days, the competitors were tasked with writing code that was then uploaded to physical drones waiting in a warehouse in Russia that would perform the tasked flights.
Competitors were presented with live YouTube footage of their drones, essentially on the other side of the world, flying autonomously using the code they had just written.
The drones needed to navigate to specific positions in the testing warehouse without GPS, relying solely on visual cues, and then perform measurements on boxes placed at those positions using laser rangefinders.
Mooney said he was proud of Welgemoed’s repeated achievements as a member of the MAO.
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