A brilliant 17-year-old Nigerian boy, Isah Auwal Barde, has won a scholarship to study computer engineering after building a functional remote-controlled robot using cardboard papers from scraps.
Auwal, who hails from Kano, Northern Nigeria, just concluded his secondary school education with high hopes of advancing his knowledge. Shortly after the exceptional story of Isah Auwal gained attention, he was awarded an undergraduate scholarship to Baze University.
Isah Auwal’s robot uses a robotic exoskeleton remote control, a system that controls the robot through the actions of the person operating it. According to him, it took him two years to invent the robot using local materials, such as DC motors, copper wires, pipes, corrugated cardboard, and metal.
“I use cartons, pen covers, bottles, and those materials that are not hard to get, as well as the ones that I buy in the market, like DC motors,” Isah told the BBC.
“Di DC motors are the most expensive of all the materials I use for my design, and they cost just N500 for each one of the six used in the robot.
“After designing the robot, I started working on how to make the robot move instead of being static, so I began working on the exoskeleton, which now makes it move.
“At the moment, the robot can mimic everything I do; if I move my hand up, the robot will also move its hand up, the same thing if I move my hand down,” Isah added.
Although Isha Auwal expressed that he wishes to study robotics engineering to assist Nigeria in tackling security challenges, he has been awarded a bachelor’s degree scholarship to study computer engineering by the government of Nigeria.
He noted that his current achievement is his starting point, as he plans to build bigger and better robots. “This is just my starting point; my dream is to build artificial intelligence robots that can control themselves without any remote control,” he said.
