Daily Times

LAHORE: The 5th Robitics Expo concluded at the Information Technology University (ITU) on Saturday.

In the expo, 14 robot prototypes, addressing locally relevant problems of Pakistan were displayed. These have been successfully designed and built by the students of ITU.

Students have built some very interesting robots, including Rekhta, an ultimate Urdu word predictor and transliterator that works in Roman and Noori Nastaleeq; Windope, a window cleaning robot designed and built to save the lives of window cleaners who work in adverse environments to clean windows in high-rise buildings; Mawazin, a medical product that ensures safety against over-dose of anaesthesia medicine and administers drugs at a controlled rate; Machine-e-Meharbani, a vending machine that takes plastic bottles as credit and in return provides food to homeless people; The Eye-Writer, a robot designed for paralysed people to help them to do various tasks such as writing or controlling switch buttons by simple movements of their eyes, and Taabatul Miyah, a robot that autonomously controls your residential water motor based on water pressure from the main supply.

A panel of judges declared Rock Star award and three successful teams, while robotics teams catwalk also attracted the audience.

Addressing the ceremony, ITU Vice Chancellor Dr Umar Saif announced that the successful projects undertaken by the ITU students would be commercialised.

Dr. Umar said, “In this era of robotic revolution, students of our university are highly motivated and passionate, as they are playing a crucial role in bringing this revolution to Pakistan. This time around, our country is not going to lag behind in this technological run.”

Inzamamul Haq, a legendary personality of Pakistan cricket – who attended the event as the chief guest – was highly impressed by students’ efforts. “I foresee a bright future of Pakistan in technological innovation, and InshaAllah one day, we will be ranked amongst the best in the business, he said.

Talha Rehmani, lead of robotics programme at the ITU said, “It is remarkable that our undergraduate third-semester students are demonstrating such an innovation in robotics to solve locally relevant problems at this level and this is highly unprecedented.”

Well-renowned people from diverse fields attended the expo, including chief executive officer from over 15 companies, cricketers from Pakistan National Team, leading educationalists and journalists.