Students of the International University for the Humanities and Development (IUHD) gaining one of the winning awards at the “RoboRAVE Asia 2017” international competition, held in February in the capital of the Republic of China in Beijing.“RoboRAVE” is an international competition in the field of robotics. The aim of competition is to promote an educational program in an interactive format and identify the talented young people. It is a part of the Robotics Education program for teaching students and teachers how to design, build, program and test robots to perform a variety of tasks. It was first started in the US in 2001 and has since had robotics competitions in eight countries, including China, Japan, Mexico, Spain, and France.
On February 8-9, the RoboRAVE Asia Open 2017 Competition in Beijing gathered about 100 teams and guests from over half dozen countries of the world. Teams struggled for the right to be the best in different age categories in the following competitions: innovative robot (Robotovate Challenge); Fire Fighting Challenge; Line Following Challenge; mining robot (Alpinebot Challenge) and the robot-knight (Jousting Challenge). The IUHD-United team from Turkmenistan participated at the Robotovate Challenge – the challenge dedicated to promotion, support, and connection of the entrepreneurial and innovative robotics with the communities of educators, businesses, and government.
The IUHD-United team represented two members of the Engineering Club, one member of the Business Club, and one member of the Lawyers Club of the University, creating a synergy of technical, entrepreneurial, and creativity spirits. The students presented an innovative solution related to the mobile phone hygiene issue. The team members conducted their research, and noted that “we use mobile phones most of the day, but not every user knows about the rules of hygiene in handling the device and the bacteria that inhabit the surface of the phone. According to statistics, there are about 3.7 billion users and each of their touch on average may have contained up to 25,000 bacteria.” The students came up with a device that performed an anti-bacterial surface cleaning function for the mobile phones. The prototype robot is a hybrid of a special Arduino microcontroller, programming the process of cleaning the phone, and is designed from the Lego parts with a fixed antibacterial spray and infrared sensors to detect bacteria. To slide the mobile phone, the students used 2 Lego motors that in turn proved the motto of the RoboRAVE competition – “Today’s Play Tomorrow’s Pay!”
The team under the mentorship of Didar Hayytov, teacher of the Department of computer technologies and systems, was highly commended by the international team of judges and peer teams.
IUHD has conducted the Computer Sciences competition at the University in May 31, 2016. Students battled in Line Following, SumoBot, and RoboRacing Challenges. This contest inspired participants to learn more about programming and robotics. As a result, one of the winners of the challenges and the President of the Engineering club Mahri Ilmedova gathered a team and applied for participation at the RoboRave Asia Open 2017 with a new innovative product.
Currently, the Department of computer technologies and systems prepares young professionals in three areas of specialization: Computer Technology, Programming, Information and Communication Technologies. Students and Faculty members of the Department have started the Engineering club which aims at conducting more competitions and events to attract passionate young professionals from IUHD and other universities in Turkmenistan to designing, building, and programming innovative solutions, as well as presenting our University at other National and International events, gaining and sharing experience in the fields of information technologies and robotics.
Didar Haýytow, Kerim Jumaýew
Lecturer of International University for the Humanities and Development