Tracking important updates and news:

23 Aug ... Last two competition summaries posted:

1. From the University of Johannesburg - Automated Goalkeeper with Return Function - Competing students: Adrian Levy; Stephen Rose; Milan Isvarlal; John Taylor

Click here to download a summary of the design.

2. From the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal - The Automatic Goalkeeper Coach

Competing students: Calvin Cunniffe; Cameron Israel; Leemeshen Naidoo; Friedrich W H Schulenburg

Click here to download a summary of the design.

16 Aug ... Two competition summaries have been posted:

1. From Stellenbosch University - The Tshabalala Soccer Ball Shooting Machine - competing Students - Ivan Deetlefs; Alex Oelofse; Thabo Mofokeng and Ryan du Plessis.

Click here to access a summary of the Stellenbosch University entry.

And a nice touch from the Stellenbosch students was something that could be loaded onto YouTube:
YouTube video ... 01. Tshabalala Ball Shooting Video
YouTube video ... 02. Tshabalala Moving on Track Video

2. From Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University - The Automatic Golf Teeing Machine - competing students Mark Geel; Sebastian Pillay; Jonathan Petrie; and Dylan Townsend.
Click here to access a summary of the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University entry.

By the way, the Tshaba touch was nice ...! Dankie Tshaba ...!

Two more interesting entries from the universities of Johannesburg and Kwa-Zulu Natal will be loaded as soon as possible.

05 Aug ... Press Release - Three in a row for PneuDrive Challenge 2010 winners!

The winners have been officially announced to the press. Click here for the Press Release.

02 Aug ... Winners announced

South Africa: The winner of the PneuDrive Challenge 2010 was announced in Johannesburg on 29 July 2010 after two days of intensive judging by a panel of industry experts. The University of Stellenbosch took the top spot for the third time in a row with their “Tshabalala Soccer Ball Shooting Machine”. The design was done by four Stellenbosch Mechanical Engineering students: Ivan Deetlefs; Alex Oelofse; Thabo Mofokeng and Ryan du Plessis.

The University of KwaZulu-Natal, supervised by Anthony Walker came in second. The students were Calvin Cunniffe, Cameron Israel, Leemeshen Naidoo, and Friedrich W H Schulenburg

Well done to the winning team and Professor Basson ..!

Click here to view a summarised description of the entries.

27 July ... Official judging of the entries is taking place

Analysing and evaluating of final submissions will be done by our judging panel, made up of the following delegates:
* Ken Nixon - SAIEE representative and Senior Lecturer (BSc(Eng)(Electrical), MSc, PhD (Wits), SMSAIEE, MIEEE)
* Chris Oliver - Didactic Consultant - Festo
* Norman Maleka - Electronics Manager - SEW Eurodrive
* Antonie le Roux - Bateman (Project Engineer / PR Eng B.Mech)
* Dale Oosthuizen - Technical Director - Abtech Enterprises

Good luck to those who have made it this far. Click here to view a summarised description of the entries.

21 July ...Four entries using “Motion in Sport” as their design theme have been submitted for final judging

The four entries that will undergo judging on the 27th and 28 July are:
• An Automatic Golf Teeing Machine from the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University.
• A Soccer Ball Shooting Machine from Stellenbosch University
• An Automated Goalkeeper with Return Function from the University of Johannesburg
• An Automatic Goalkeeper Coach from the University of Kwa-Zullu Natal.

Click here to view a summarised description of the entries.
Detailed summaries of entries will be posted to the website by the end of July.

06 July ... Additional judge added to the judging panel
A senior lecturer from the University of the Witwatersrand - Ken J. Nixon BSc(Eng)(Electrical), MSc, PhD (Wits), SMSAIEE, MIEEE - has kindly agreed to add his knowledge and experience to the judging panel.

06 July ... Judging to take place on 27th and 28th July
All presentations and projects have been handed in and will be forwarded to the Festo head offices in Johannesburg where the jugding panel will go through the submissions together and discuss their findings. Each judge brings various strengths to the table  and scores projects individually. Scores are added up at the end of the two days in order to decide on a winner.

30 June ... The competition is closed for entries
As mentioned on all presentations and correspondence, and noted on this website, the competition is closed for further entries.

19 June ... Crown Publications - Watt Now to publish an advert shortly
With less than two weeks to go, we've decided to generate some publicity to not only encourage competing students to focus their energy on fine-tuning their submissions, but to also update the engineering industry that the competition is closing and that they can start preparing themselves for some innovative student ideas and designs that will be posted onto this site during July and August.

01 June ... Competition judges getting on board
We are pleased to confirm that the following judges have been announced for the competition:
Ken Nixon - SAIEE representative and Senior Lecturer (BSc(Eng)(Electrical), MSc, PhD (Wits), SMSAIEE, MIEEE)
Chris Oliver - Didactic Consultant - Festo
Norman Maleka - Electronics Manager - SEW Eurodrive
Antonie le Roux - Bateman (Project Engineer / PR Eng B.Mech)
Dale Oosthuizen - Technical Director - Abtech Enterprises

24 May ... PneuDrive Advert placed on the Watt Now website The web presence of the PneuDrive Challenge has been expanded a little more with Crown Publications, who publish the Watt Now magazine, agreeing to advertise the competition on the home page of their website. We look forward to building this relationship so that they can become an increasing part of the competition next year.
26 April ... Introducing a Hints and Tips Page Energy and activity by numerous teams in the PneuDrive Challenge seems to be gaining some decent momentum, so we've decided to create a page for hints and tips that will help students who are registered on this website with some valuable insight and information. Access the hints and tips by clicking here.
01 April ... The Festo Fluiddraw software has been made available for free to competing students who are wanting to access and view the Festo symbols library. The download of the software (52 Mb - so ADSL connection is recommended) will be available until 13 April 2010.	The download for the Festo Fluidraw Software is no longer available.