Mobile robotics in education and student engineering competitions

In recent years the use of mobile robotics increased significantly, with innovative solutions paving the way for new applications. Besides commercial and personal uses, mobile robotics became accepted as fascinating learning systems and research objects. In this regard, the industrial education company Festo Didactic introduced Robotino, an autonomous mobile mechatronic learning and research system, as a standardised platform for education across the fields of engineering and information technology. This publication focuses on technical system details, also African and international competitions attended by Festo Didactic to create motivating and challenging events for educational users of mobile robots. We present the impact of these learning systems and competitions on the training of industrially-relevant engineers.