NUS: ECE Student Achievement Websites -NUS Double Degree Program

The Crime Prevention Robot Design Competition 2004 - Merit Award

Umar Sohail Mirza

Saad Naveed Pall &

Farooq Jamil Alvi

Won the Merit Award in The Crime Prevention Robot Design Competition 2004 by the National Crime Prevention Council and Singapore Police Force.

The competition was jointly organized by the National Crime Prevention Council and Singapore Police Force with the following objectives:

to leverage on information technology to enhance crime prevention awareness and knowledge,
encourage innovation in design among students and provide promising young engineers a platform to showcase their ideas, and
to provide a learning opportunity for students to apply their classroom knowledge in the conceptualisation and design of a robot that can assist in disseminating crime prevention advice.

The three final year students conceptualized and designed a 3D graphical representation of a robot, named SkyBot , to disseminate crime prevention information to the general public, from pre-schoolers to senior citizens in the four official languages. It was visualized using the 3D environment of Adobe Dimensions. Their entry won the Merit Award in the competition, which involved participants from the local Universities, Polytechnics and Institutes of Technical Education. A commendation plaque was also presented to NUS for the winning entry – SkyBot.

SkyBot is a revolutionary idea in the world of crime prevention. It is a novel way of leveraging information technology for the purpose of crime prevention by enhancing public awareness on various issues. Skybot is not a land-based robot – it is suspended by overhead cables supported by poles over busy pedestrian lanes and roadsides. It uses state-of-the-art technology to disseminate information among the masses while at the same time adding an aesthetic appeal to the skyline.

SkyBot helps disseminate crime prevention information in several ways: on an LCD panel on the body of the robot, by projecting public information messages onto buildings and by blasting announcements through speakers on the robot. Furthermore, the robot is equipped with cameras to capture any breach of law on a busy street or walkway, or for general purposes . Spotlights on SkyBot helps illuminate any such breach or any event of public interest. All features including the LCD panel, projector, speaker, camera and spotlights are remotely controlled from an outside station, and data is sent to SkyBot via an RF channel.