SINGAPORE: An unmanned robot that can go into disaster zones and rescue people is one of the 450 innovations on display, at the Spinnovex Innovation Exhibition.
The exhibition is Singapore Polytechnic's annual event, which showcases some of the top projects by final-year students.
The robot, named "Life Seeker" looks like a toy car but it's an all-terrain vehicle designed by students to locate survivors under rubble.
It uses mini microphones to pick up voices of survivors.
The robot is half the size of existing ones in the market.
At a price tag of S$2, 500 compared to S$70 000 for professionally-made ones, it appears there could be market in Singapore.
Diploma in Mechatronics and Robotics third-year student Wei Linyun said some of their research was carried out at the training ground of the Singapore Civil Defence Force.
"After we visited their site and communicated with them, we found that they may need such a robot which will improve their efficiency."
The student designers say a whole team of vehicles can be produced at a fraction of the cost of what's on the market.
The vehicles will work as a team and communicate with one another through swarm technology, when a signal of a survivor is found.
They swarm covers a larger search area.
And even if one robot goes down, the search team will not collapse.
