Robots ‘think’ food matters
Thirteen countries showcased their skills in the field of robotics at the World Robot Olympiad Friendship Invitational 2018, which culminates today at the Hoops Dome in Lapu-Lapu City.
The participating countries are Japan, Chinese Taipei, Russia, USA, Philippines, Hungary, Germany, Switzerland, Malaysia, Turkey, Denmark, Italy, and Romania.
With this year’s theme, “Food Matters,” the participants created robots that can help solve food problems in the community.
For the elementary level, the participants created robots that segregate food. They can separate overripe fruits, which will be conveyed to the factory to be made into candies or juice, from the good ones, which will go to the grocery. The rotten ones will be placed by the robots to a biogas chamber.
For the high school category, they were tasked to create robots that can do precision farming.
The high school level participants designed a robot that can detect the kinds of soil that can be used for farming.
The robots designed for precision farming can plant a seedling in a hectare of land in an efficient way.
Donald Dungog, Cebu Robotics Society president, said precision farming robots are very helpful especially to a country that may be on the brink of a rice crisis.
For the senior high school category, the participants created a robot intended for food distribution. The robot can get food, put it in a ship for distribution. They will be stored with temperature controller to avoid spoilage.
Aside from those categories, there was also robotic soccer category, in which participants create robots that can play soccer.
In this category, natives from Lapu-Lapu City, Jay Niño Clark Basilgo and Ron Marc Cañete, both students from Science and Technology Education Center, made it to the finals.
Basilgo and Cañete admitted that it was their first time to join WRO, but with proper teamwork, they were able to make it to the finals.
Basilgo said they designed their robot with an infrared sensor so it can detect the ball. Since the soccer ball also has infrared, the robot can detect its direction and could promptly to stir its wheels to chase the ball.
Their robot also has a compass censor for setting the direction of the goal and establish the right direction.
The team of Basilgo and Cañete is only one of the 70 competing teams that joined this year’s WRO.
Dungog emphasized that the robots created by the participants are not remote controlled, but are programmed with artificial intelligence.
Dungog said that through this event, the students will learn not just the technical side of designing robots, but also learn to innovate to help the community.