Students invent robots to perform common tasks

Escrito por Jim Onyango

Officials at the Ministry of Higher Education said the robots will be on display at the Kenya Polytechnic University College on Saturday.Various higher learning institutions will display their robot inventions at the one-day Nairobi region robot contest that will also be rolled out into other provinces this month. “The guidelines given to universities, colleges and technical institutes are to have them develop robots that can move from one point to the other and that they should be able to transfer materials such as food from place to place. We are impressed by what they have made,” said Ms Dorcas Ambuto, the public relations officer at the ministry.The Nairobi area provincial technical training officer, Mr Kipng’etich Misoi, said most of the robots weighed 30 kilogrammes and stood at one metre tall. “I have seen the robots, they are able to move from place to place and pick and drop things,” said Mr Misoi who is coordinating the contest.“Come and see robots deliver food to their communities,” said an advertisement placed in newspapers. However, we could not independently verify the facts as officials at the ministry said they had instructed institutions involved not to unveil the robots to the media before Saturday.“This is a contest and we want everything to be unveiled on Saturday,” said Ms Ambuto. The move follows several attempts by Japanese and Chinese scientists to come up with robots that can perform several chores including looking after patients.
Attempts by Kenya in the 80’s to develop cars flopped after the Numeric Machining Complex abandoned the Nyayo Car Project after sinking in millions of shillings of tax payers’ money.The display of Kenyan made robots is likely to rekindle hopes for industrialising the country through innovation. Further contests will be held in the Mount Kenya Region next week.

Rift Valley will hold its contest at the Eldoret Polytechnic on October 9, while Western Kenya and Coast will have their shows on October 15 and 24 respectively. The regional contests will culminate in a national contest pitting winners of the provincial shows against each other. Kenya’s interest in developing her own robots was ignited after a recent visit to Japan and China by officials of the ministry. “The officials attended robot shows and they were very impressed. They thought that through robots Kenya can achieve the industrialisation dream,” said Ms Ambuto. “The robots we are looking forward to developing are those that will be able to scale rough terrain and even deliver food to communities that cannot be reached by vehicles.”