Angeleños to join int’l robots battle in Australia

• Source: http://punto.com.ph/News/Article/28102/Volume-10-No-119/Feature-Article/Angele%C3%B1os-to-join-int%E2%80%99l-robots-battle-in-Australia
• Friday, September 22, 2017

By Ashley Manabat

ANGELES CITY – Two teams from the Angeles City Science High School (ACSHS) are prepping up for the prestigious Australian Robotics Challenge hosted by Griffith University in the Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia next month.

The two teams are made up of senior high school students with the first team composed of Grade 11s Iñaki Santos and Sancho Lingat who will be presenting an “assistive device for the blind” as their entry in the competition.

“Our paper is an assistive device for the blind or visually impaired persons which are actually two devices, an eyeglass and a white cane,” Santos said.

“We attached various sensors on the glasses and cane in strategic places so that the devices can sense obstacles in the user’s path so that a visually impaired person can navigate even in unfamiliar surroundings,” he added.

Lingat said it has other features like a GPS so that user’s family can track the location of the user if he or she gets into trouble. He said the cane has a button on top which can send a distress call to family members.

The devices are powered by 7.4 volts lithium polymer battery, he added.

Lingat also said Infrared distance sensors attached on both sides of the eyeglasses has varying degrees of vibrations to alert the user if the obstacle is near or far or if is in front or on the left or on the right of the user.

The devices can also sense if the user is in a crowd which shuts off the sensors automatically and the user can resort to the cane instead which can be used to increase the field of the user, Santos explained.

“We will include an RFID (radio frequency identification) tag as a security measure so that only the owner can use the devices or to prevent it from being stolen or lost,” he said.

Lingat said their project cost around P17,000 to make. Materials were acquired through local sources, he said.

The second team is composed of Grade 12 students Heinrich Tulan, Jed Mewag and Armand Agbulos who said they were inspired with the paper that won in the Google Science Fair with the Moringa Oleifera as water purifier.

Agbulos said their competition entry is a “Moringa seed water filtration combined with ultraviolet (UV) light” which cost them around P10,000 to make.

Mewag pointed out that their project can filter and disinfect any kind of water including turbid water like floodwaters or even mud except salt water.

“Basically it guarantees that the particles will be removed because of the filter and the UV light will remove the bacteria,” Agbulos said.

“The Moringa seeds will be crushed and then mixed with the water and allow some time for the sediments to settle down,” Tulan said.

“All the sediments will go down with the crushed seed,” he said. “The upper layer will be purifi ed water. It takes around 45 minutes for turbid water to turn into potable water,” he said.

Tulan said they were inspired to make their project so that they can help evacuees in calamity stricken areas by providing them accessible potable water.

The Australian robot competition is set on October 27 to 29.

Eleven schools from the Philippines will join the competition.

Lingat, from the first team, said they recently won the National Science and Technology Fair in Tagaytay with their “micro-controlled house for persons with physical disabilities.”

He said the device is capable of opening and closing lights and locking and closing doors among others.

“We realized that the PWDs really need this and we found a way to control the appliances in the house through an application we created in the smart phone,” he said.

Lolita Bautista, the teams’ coach and adviser, said the Department of Education (DepEd) gave them “very minimal assistance” and the students shoulder most of the expenses.

Bautista will join the teams in Australia as well as the ACSHS principal, the science supervisor of DepEd and the schools’ superintendent.

A $300 registration for each of the participants is required, Bautista said.

She said the founder of the Pinoy Robot Games in the Philippines, Cesar Melvin Matulac, was the one who urged them to join the competition in Australia.

The Australian Robotics Challenge will gather student robotic enthusiasts from around the world to present their creations.

Hundreds of participants are expected to take part in the event from China, South Korea, the Philippines and Australia.

Hosted by Griffith University’s Robotics Lab, the event will run for three days at the Gold Coast campus where students will compete in different categories. The challenge aims to help students enhance their creativity and learn STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths) education effectively through robot education and competition.