Erik Kovács and Bálint Farkas, students of mechatronics engineering at the Obuda University’s Alba Regia Technical Faculty, achieved a tremendous success by winning silver medals in the EuroSkills Industrial Robotics competition held in Gdansk during the European Skills Championships. Rector Prof. Dr. Levente Kovács, accompanied by members of the University Council, ceremoniously congratulated the silver medalist students.
In the European Skills Championships held in the first week of September, Hungary participated for the eighth time. The EuroSkills Gdansk 2023 competition saw 576 young professionals from 32 countries showcase their skills in 42 official competition categories and 1 demonstration skill. Hungary was represented by 26 young individuals in 22 competition categories. Among them, Bálint Farkas and Erik Kovács, students in the master’s program at the Alba Regia Technical Faculty, stood out by winning a silver medal in the industrial robotics competition, with the expert support of István Bíró – as reported by Prof. Dr. Levente Kovács. In the competition, their task was to program a polishing process, and they had three days to perfect their work. These university students in the master’s program had previously qualified for this competition by securing the first place at the FANUC Olympics in November 2021 and also qualified for the WorldSkills Competition 2022 Special Edition in Luxembourg.
The Road to the Summit of Europe
Two years ago, the FANUC Olympics took place at the Fanuc Hungary headquarters in Törökbálint. Student competitors were tasked with completing a complex assignment within a 9-hour time frame. In this task, an industrial robot had to pick up a workpiece, assemble it, and finally inspect whether the workpiece was of good quality. Obuda University managed to secure first and second places in the competition, specifically with students from the Alba Regia Technical Faculty. Their mentor was Dr. Károly Széll, a university lecturer. (1st place: Bálint Károly Farkas and Erik Kovács. 2nd place: Márk Liszi and Gábor Molnár.)
The first-place team (Bálint Farkas and Erik Kovács) qualified for the international competition WorldSkills Shanghai 2022 through this competition. In the field of Engineering and Manufacturing Technologies, they competed in the section of Robot Systems Integration against engineering teams from other nations.
(The entire ÓE AMK team that participated in the competition: Erik Kovács, Bálint Károly Farkas, Gergő József Kálmán, Dr. Károly Széll, Márk Liszi, Gábor Molnár, Mátyás Marx. The reserve team members were Gergő József Kálmán and Mátyás Marx, who supported and cheered on the competitors throughout the entire competition.
The team from Fanuc Hungary, who organized the Fanuc Olympics: István Bíró as an expert, Ákos Horváth, and András Bablena.)
About WorldSkills
The EuroSkills and WorldSkills competitions, with a history of over 70 years, will see the youngest generation of competitors measuring their skills in a total of 63 different trades in 2024, ranging from landscape gardening to mobile application development. Industrial Robotics (Robot Systems Integration), introduced in 2019, is considered a relatively young category within WorldSkills. FANUC, one of the main sponsors of the EuroSkills and WorldSkills competitions, played a significant role in introducing robotics as a competition category. The annual FANUC Olympics robotics competition, held at the FANUC headquarters, always serves as a qualifier for the following year’s WorldSkills competition.
