Two 9th graders create a robot to monitor and evaluate soil 'health'

The authors of the award belong to two students Mai Nguyen Gia My and Vu Tran Gia Huy - 9th grade students of Thuan An Secondary School, Hau Giang under the guidance of teacher Mai Trong Huu and mentor Nguyen Van Son, lecturer of Hoa Sen University.

On November 25, the Ministry of Education and Training, Samsung Vietnam Complex and Youth Success Organization (JA Vietnam) organized the Final Round and the 5th Solve for Tomorrow Awards Ceremony to find outstanding innovative technology projects that contribute to solving social and local problems.

This year's contest attracted nearly 150,000 students and teachers to register, receiving 2,266 entries - double the number in 2022.

The Final Round saw the competition of 10 best teams from many provinces and cities across the country, including 5 teams from Group A (Middle School) and 5 teams from Group B (High School) with projects in many different fields from environment, education , to health, medicine, etc.

*Two students won first prize in the Solve for Tomorrow competition for secondary school students from Hau Giang province (Photo: N. Huyen)*

In this Final Round, the teams directly presented their projects, operated the models and answered questions from the judges.

The final results were evaluated by the jury not only based on product and project implementation factors, but also on soft skills such as presentation skills, critical thinking skills, teamwork skills and time management skills.

After a period of intense competition, with outstanding ideas, highly applicable product models, and convincing presentations, the First Prize was awarded to the Khom Cau Duc team of Thuan An Secondary School - Hau Giang with the project Research, design and manufacture of Agro Robot - monitoring, supervising, and evaluating the health status of rice-growing land in Long My district, Hau Giang province (Table A) and the Mindful Medical Brain team of Hanoi - Amsterdam High School for the Gifted with the project MedIQ - smart medical box applying IoT platform and management software system (Table B).

robot greedy.jpeg — Agro Robot competes in the final round.

Mr. Nguyen Van Son, a lecturer at Hoa Sen University, is the mentor for the Agro Robot research, design and manufacturing project and proudly said that the students are all excellent students, actively participating in school activities, especially activities related to STEM education.

When they heard about the competition, the two students worked together to come up with ideas for implementation with their teachers. They went through many difficulties, from designing the mechanics to make the robot “visit the fields” without destroying the rice; how it could run on muddy fields…

The students had to calculate all of these issues to create a final product with high wheels. The wheel design also had to be special so that it could move on muddy fields to compete in today's final round.

“I am very proud of you. The creation of Agro Robots that can move in the fields aims to build an IoT system to collect, display, evaluate and analyze soil data. From there, monitor soil quality via web and application apps using IoT technology.

The group aims to commercialize the product. In addition, they also hope to successfully develop drones so that they can deploy them to larger sample fields at a faster speed and time,” Mr. Son informed.

The Solve for Tomorrow 2023 competition was launched in April for middle and high school students aged 12 to 18 to encourage them to apply STEM education knowledge related to the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics to solve existing social problems.

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