'Rice country' students and their desire to create robots to help farmers

Behind this grand prize is the journey of overcoming difficulties, creating robots and the big dreams of students born and raised in the "rice countryside".

A whole month of hard work assembling and repairing...

The theme of the FPTU AI & Robotics Challenge 2025 is "Sustainable Agriculture ". In the Robotics round, the challenge for the teams' robots is to perform practical tasks such as transporting soil and seeds into greenhouses for production and harvesting. Two teams join forces to form an "alliance" to maintain seed production and harvest different types of agricultural products; support agricultural production...

With a passion for creativity, students of Le Hong Phong High School including: Nguyen Khai Huyen (team leader), Luong Hieu Ngan, Le Duy Manh, Ngo Xuan Hai and Nguyen Ngoc Hoang Xuan Hoa, under the guidance of teacher Vo Thi Huong Trang, created and named the robot "IRONCORTEX".

Surpassing hundreds of excellent teams from high schools across the country, IRONCORTEX and robot LIONKING 1 of Xuan Mai High School ( Hanoi ) became the champion.

Luong Hieu Ngan shared that the team members found and connected with each other through their passion for programming and building robots. For more than two months, after class, the whole team regularly went to the teacher's house to research, disassemble components, and then test and fix them continuously. There were times when the whole team worked so hard that they forgot about breaks and meal times...

The IRONCORTEX robot is designed to be able to put balls into a 90cm high greenhouse by pulling a string; the ball tray can be tilted to pour into the greenhouse. The team uses a servo gripper combined with an ultrasonic sensor to pick up and drop agricultural products into the basket, ensuring accuracy. The robot moves thanks to the use of multi-directional wheels in the front and 2 motors with wheels for driving...

Ngo Xuan Hai added that the team has built an optimal control program, combining manual and sensor signal processing to ensure the robot operates stably and flexibly.

With the theme "Sustainable Agriculture", The Le Hong Phong High School team cleverly used environmentally friendly materials when making the robot. In addition to the electronic components, IRONCORTEX is mostly recycled from PVC pipes and the coil mechanism uses PVC pipes, helping to save costs, be light, durable...

"We focused on optimizing both the mechanical and programming parts, helping the robot operate stably, process quickly and accurately, so we got a high score" - Nguyen Ngoc Hoang Xuan Hoa shared the secret to winning the competition.

Wish for a real robot product

The IRONCORTEX robot has become the champion of the FPTU AI & Robotics Challenge 2025. However, the students from the "rice countryside" in Tay Hoa commune (formerly Phu Yen province, now Dak Lak province) have gone through a difficult journey to achieve that result.

There is no specialized workshop or laboratory, so the students have to explore, refine, and edit the meticulous details to achieve high precision... Many robot components are reused from old equipment or ordered from afar, which is both costly and time-consuming. Sometimes, just because of a small technical error, the whole group has to ask for the support of teachers and spend many days finding a solution...

In the future, students of Le Hong Phong High School hope to develop the IRONCORTEX robot to perform additional tasks in the garden. The robot can charge itself with solar energy; mow the grass itself; measure PH humidity and nutrients in the soil to water and fertilize plants; and have a mini radar to scan and warn of dangers in the garden. Periodically, the robot takes pictures of leaves and plants in the garden and sends them to the AI system to analyze the disease and then provide treatment directions...

Nguyen Khai Huyen, captain of the IRONCORTEX robot competition team, expressed his group's wish for businesses to participate in supporting them so that they can have real products, not just robots for competition and performance.

Every day, farmers in the countryside work hard with their fields from planting to harvesting. You wish this robot would truly become a companion of farmers; helping them save effort, increase productivity and move towards smart, sustainable agriculture...