WorldSkills Jamaica Competitor, Omar Cockett, is competing in one of the newest skills at the 48th WorldSkills Competition in Shanghai, China.
This year’s competition features 64 skills, including seven new additions, namely, Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS), Dental Prosthetics, Digital Media Interactive Design, Intelligent Security Technology, Rail Vehicle Technology, Retail Sales and Software Testing.
Omar is among 11 competitors vying for top honours in Skill 64, UAS, which requires competitors to demonstrate proficiency in areas such as flight control, navigation, sensors, electronics, software and troubleshooting as they work with unmanned aircraft systems, commonly referred to as drones.
Earlier this year, Studica Robotics partnered with WorldSkills Jamaica to support a one-week international Autonomous Mobile Robotics (AMR) and UAS training camp, bringing together competitors and experts from Jamaica, Brazil, Barbados, China and Singapore.
The hands-on programme provided experience with the technologies and competition methodologies Omar would encounter in Shanghai.
“We’ve been doing a lot,” he told JIS News, sharing that day one of competition, on September 23, began with building the drone using the Studica WS500 UAV Quadcopter Kit.
“There were more challenges than I was expecting, but all in all, I feel confident about my performance on day one. Day two was more or less the same and we did the first flight,” he said.
Day three’s module included prototyping, servicing of a farm drone and vision.
“We did vision, which is advanced piloting and that’s basically where we use the depth sensor camera and it detects a colour and it follows a rover that’s on the ground,” Omar explained.
He said that day four’s module will involve programming the drone to move around a maze, detect colours and respond by changing the lights, before moving on to the next colour.
Omar said his experience so far has been good.
“Positive all around. It’s been mainly hardware challenges, things that we can’t control,” he said,
Omar has high expectations for the final day of the competition.
“Hopefully, I can meet them. I think we will get a decent placement because it’s been going good so far,” he said.
