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Monday, September 26, 2022

University of Pretoria (UP), South Africa - Meet smWoef, the University of Pretoria’s new robotic dog

Title:
Meet smWoef, the University of Pretoria’s new robotic dog

Author:
Hlengiwe Mnguni
 
Published:
University of Pretoria, 6 September 2022
 
From the news article:
Professor Wynand Steyn, Head of the Department of Civil Engineering in UP’s Faculty of Engineering, Built Environment and Information Technology, was the one who named smWoef. The “sm” stands for “smart” because it is a Smart Alternative Transportation Platform connected to the internet, and “woef” is the Afrikaans spelling for “woof”, the sound a dog makes, because smWoef is a four-legged robot that resembles a dog. Despite the formulation of its name, however, it is pronounced as one syllable – as if it were written as “smwoef”.