Nigerian Students Develop Service Robot for Hospitality Industry

A team of 15 students from Federal Government College (FGC), Rubochi, in Nigeria’s Federal Capital Territory has developed a Robot prototype that can be used for humanitarian and hospitality activities.

 

Okpara Ephraim, a lead team member told journalists in Abuja while presenting the robot to the Federal Ministry of Education that the robot, named “Ruby Waiter-Bot” can render services  in hotels, motels, restaurants, hospitals, offices and event centers, among others.

 

He further disclosed that the robot was made of 70percent local materials as well as available recycled items around the team.

 

Robotic innovation project

The robotic innovation project was presented to the Federal Ministry of Education in Abuja on Tuesday.

 

The project was facilitated by the First Lego League (FLL) and Coderina Education Technology Foundation with the support of Federal Ministry of Education.

 

Lego League (FLL) is an exciting and powerful experiential project based learning Programme that uses robotics to engage younger children, between ages  9-16 in playful and meaningful learning within the elements of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering Arts and Mathematics).

Training Teachers
Coderina Education Technology Foundation, with Federal Ministry of Education have been training teachers of FUCs since 2020 on Robotics, Coding and Intelligence.

 

These teachers in return have engaged in training and retraining of students for both local and international competitions.

 

Speaking while presenting the students to the permanent secretary of the Federal Ministry of Education, Andrew David Adejo, the principal of the school, Mrs Roseline Micheal Inyang said training the teachers received from Coderina has birthed the teams of students that can now compete with any student at their level in the world.

 

Responding, the Permanent Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Education, David Adejo commended the students for the innovation and the partners on the project.

 

Inconsistency of the country

Adejo said a major challenge facing innovation in Nigeria was the inconsistency of the country to link research to development.

 

He challenged the students to move step further by producing a robot that would move files from one office to another, saying that some of the innovation can be commercialized, if they work well.

 

“Some of these things can be commercialised but the problem with Nigeria is that we don’t link research to development, where the world is going now is no longer about the degree but what an individual can do with their brains that is what matters Artifical intelligence is where we are going,“ he said.

 

 

“Don’t let this get into your head, your are just starting. Be yourself, you have more work to do,” he charged the students.

 

One of the students, Ogbole Goodluck, a pioneer team member on the project said the idea was birthed from hospitality business of one of their parents who is into catering services and the students collectively thought of ways to ease her business.

 

Bamaiyi Onyoche, and Ogbole favour, also members of the team said ideas of building of robot was not only peculiar to science students explaining that Ruby Waiter provided opportunity for students in other fields away from sciences to also express themselves.

 

The students insisted that the ruby waiter bot was develop to facilitate and to help not to replace the human beings.

 

 

Lateefah Ibrahim