What is it?
ROBOFUN Hackathon is an Industry Open-source Mobile Robotics Design Challenge, co-organised by Intel and SCUTTLE Robotics Asia. The purpose of the hackathon is for the students and lecturers that are trained in Autonomous Mobile Robotics to sharpen their skills in developing solutions to solve many real world problems using the SCUTTLE – Intel AMR Kit (shown below).
Who is involved?
The program is also supported by VIAM Robotics, a software robotics company based in New York, offering their no-code or low code platform for teams interested to accelerate their prototype development.
Supported by Malaysia Productivity Council (MPC), Malaysia Research Accelerator for Technology and Innovation (MRANTI), Malaysia Investment Development Authority (MIDA), Katapult Asia and endorsed by the Malaysian Robotics and Automation Society (MYRAS), the inaugural ROBOFUN Hackathon received participation from 35 teams representing 13 universities involving more than 130 students and lecturers.
The 13 universities are – Universiti Malaya (UM), Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM), Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS (UTP), Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR), Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM), Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia (USIM), Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia (UTHM), DRB-HICOM University (DHU), University of Southampton Malaysia Campus (USMC), Taylor’s University and Multi Media University (MMU) – representing local public universities and both local and foreign private universities in Malaysia.
What is the outcome?
These teams have gone through 4 days training on the AMR Kit conducted by SCUTTLE Robotics Asia team and Intel Microelectronics Malaysia team. The proposals were reviewed by industry partners who provided the specific industry challenges in their industry.
These companies are – APULSAR Technologies, Exzellent Profis, DaMen Mall, Favoriot, Move Robotics, Robopreneur and Retailetics – representing the manufacturing, retails, agriculture, healthcare sectors.
The proposals were reviewed by the experts in these industries and narrowed down to 31 projects that are now entering the Prototype Development stage. Next steps will be Preliminary Judging at end of Sep 2023 to select 20 teams to further into the Semi-final stage.
Team Posters (October 2023)
Below, we’ve shared the posters from the student teams in the seminfinal round. These teams each made full working prototypes of their design concepts and presented their work for judges (industry + academic) in October 2023. Each team added multiple features, identified a business opportunity, and presented their tech as a whole package solution to receive feedback (and potentially future funding!) on their plans and designs.
These posters are combined into PDF if you’d like to download a copy.
Need More Info?
Visit the Katapult Asia website for their updates in the Robofun Hackathon.
Katapult is a technology incubator based in Johor Bahru, Malaysia. Katapult began with Dr. Norazmi’s leadership and support from the SCUTTLE team and other tech entrepreneurs in 2020! Katapult is linking the efforts & goals of many related tech efforts to new team members, funding, and government intiatives.
