Striding into its 26th year in 2023, Robosub which is one of the most prestigious international student competitions of underwater robotics, welcomed student teams from all over the world to showcase their innovation and brilliance in the field of robotics. BRACU Duburi from Bangladesh has secured 2nd Place Overall and received an Ingenuity Special Award this year. The Financial Express Youth Desk team went to interview the champion team and their advisor.
Dr Md Khalilur Rhaman, advisor of BRACU Duburi & Professor of BRAC University, expressed their journey. "People of our country go to traditional trade fairs but not to tech fairs," said Mr Rhaman with a smile. According to his opinion, the students of our country are told to be engineers but are not pushed towards contributing to their passion and they are only appreciated when they are only achieving in their academics. Hence, the parents desire their children to be engineers but do not help to create fascination towards it. As a result, the students are doing great academically but their hands-on experiences are not growing. But with the advancement of time, students are more into innovation, and the number of science enthusiasts is increasing every day. "Our team has chosen the toughest competitions not because those are easy, but because those are hard," said Md Khalilur Rhaman. The team went to represent, explore the technology, show their potential, and had come back with all the happiness that will be illuminated among the upcoming generation and they will be able to conquer more.
"Students of many universities of Bangladesh and other institutions are now doing great on the international platforms. We started late but we are going great with the pace of time," added Dr Md Khalilur. The team had to face issues getting the equipment and robotic parts at the beginning but now the team easily gets access to things from wherever they need. Besides, the sponsorship support is also managed quite smoothly. Additionally, today's competitive environment is also rendering support in many ways. The advisor described that the main credit goes to the exceptional team. The team consists of the most hardworking brilliant minds who came forward on their own. With the combination of all the skilled mindsets in every sector, they were able to sync together to achieve this unitedly. "Being a riverine country, Bangladesh can be more developed and the team wants to contribute to the future of our rivers through the project. I want our students to save lives and the country through our technology," said Dr Md Khalilur Rhaman.
When we interviewed the team, the team leader, ATM Masum Billah described how their journey from zero started. As it was the first autonomous underwater robot in Bangladesh, initially they did not have the exact components required, but the creative team managed to build the AUV with the components they had in hand. With that 1st Rover, they achieved 7th Position Worldwide in SAUVC (The Singapore Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Challenge) in 2018. After gathering knowledge from other international teams after that win, major technical changes were made in the upcoming version 2.0. Later the team DUBURI targeted the Robosub competition and made version 3.0 in 2022. Then they took the hard challenge to minimise the circuit and did software updates alongside mechanical and hardware sides for Duburi 4.0 in 2023. The team also described the challenging time before the semi-final round where the robot got burnt and the whole team underwent sleepless hours for repairing the robot. "We forgot about all the struggles we had faced thoroughly when we were declared runner-up and the whole journey was worth it which cannot be described in words," said Sub Team Lead of Control & Communication S M Minoor Karim.
Nayem Hossain Saikat, project manager of BRACU Duburi, added, "Our main target was to complete the run with whatever we could at our best without any expectations. We had not expected this win as we could not test the final third task and that run going successful was unexpected to us. But our team member's precise idea had made us successfully undergo that run."
The team had to face troubles in every case till the end but they prepared them in such a way that they were able to fix the burn in the robot at the last minute with courage. "The unbelievable winning moment was justified with the remembrance of each of the struggles we faced," stated Vice Team lead Md Mahfujul Haque Sourov. With a very little point difference, BRACU Duburi has achieved the runners-up position with this amazing specification of the robot and the proficiency in documentation.
BRACU Duburi now dreams of doing future works in Bangladesh's sea service, search, and rescue operations, tourism, and in other related cases and wishes to get support from the Bangladesh government for those implementations. The team further suggests that enthusiastic students should start such activities at the school and college level so that they can not only learn but also contribute to real-life impacts during the university years. Besides, Team Duburi is also organising campaigns for the students to inspire them.
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