Aboitiz Power and Davao Light and Power Company (DLPC) expressed hopes Filipino students will embrace the advent of robotics for them to be globally competitive.
Citing that the robotics trend can transform students to become efficient and to understand their lessons in science and mathematics, the Aboitiz firms launched Kabataan Inyovator, a robotics competition held Tuesday at the Ateneo de Davao University (AdDU). The competition lured 50 primary and secondary schools from all over Mindanao.
DLPC community relations manager Fermin Edillon told Edge Davao that robotics can help students do computations and explain subject matter in science and mathematics.
“Robotics is a new technology that we would want the students to embrace for them to understand their lessons on mathematics and science. The competition is part of the whole program of Davao Light and it is one way to entice students to learn about robotics. Some of these students are advanced and some are not,” Edillon said.
The competition tasked the participants to complete different challenges that include underwater challenges, line tracing, and innovative robot category.
Edillon said for those schools that will be recognized can continue designing robots as DLPC will provide additional robotic kits to improve their designs further.
“This is not all about the trophy but what they have learned in this activity. Also naay student spectators that probably are not yet interested about robotics but through this activity they will get interested also. The reason why we are supporting this is we would want them at a very young age have knowledge about robotics and we would want to prepare our young generations with a good foundation that is technology-based,” he said.
Believing that robotics help address the growing demand for teaching science, technology, engineering and math in schools, DLPC is also hopeful that the Department of Education will also accept robotics as students also learn about science, engineering and math and get an understanding of how these subjects link together.
“This is a project that we would like DepEd to embrace. I know DepEd has limitations when it comes to designing curriculum and probably naay program sa curriculum na pwede ma- introduce ang robotics. One way of teaching the students is to show them the technology to stir their interests,” Edillon said.
Companies like DLPC and Aboitiz Power, according to Edillon, put premium on efficiency and integrating robots is one way to become more efficient.
He cited that they are using drones to check their power lines. He said using drones keep their manpower away from the risks of being electrocuted.
“But these drones will not replace us humans but this is just a tool to help Davao Light become more efficient. Robotics is a new trend and for you to become more efficient we need machines to help you with efficiency and not replacing humans because dili man jud ta ma-replace ug robots,” Edillon assured.
