AI drone, land rover robot from Ngee Ann Secondary outsmart rivals in youth tech contest
Minister for Digital Development and Information Josephine Teo (centre) with the National Youth Tech Championship winning team comprising (clockwise from bottom left) Karen Aurelia Ho, Athaalaa Altaf Hafidz, Wilson Tedja Herryanto and Lee Jia Qi from Ngee Ann Secondary School.
SINGAPORE – Buzzing drones equipped with cameras and sensors fly adeptly through a series of obsta cles.
Next, the drones detect the colours of three balls on a table – red, blue and yellow – and use their propellers to blow each ball into a matching tube.
Finally, the drones land on a target spot marked by logos on a stair-like platform.
These are not remote controlled devices but artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled drones able to navigate an obstacle course autonomously.
Over six weeks of training, more than 320 students from 67 secondary schools programmed these drones to compete in the National Youth Tech Championship 2025. This is the highest ever participation since the event debuted in 2023.
The championship, organised by the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) and Google Cloud in partnership with Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT), is one of the largest AI drone competitions for youth here.
Back for a third season, it serves as the premier c onte st for Infocomm Media Club students. The final took place at SIT's Punggol campus on July 18, involving 55 finalists from 12 teams.
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The first half of the competition consisted of an obstacle course where teams scored points for each obstacle their flying drones cleared successfully.
The second half, dubbed The Battleground, took place in a ground arena. Land rover robots had to collect cube-shaped tokens and bring them to a team's home ground. Teams earned points for each token retrieved.
Based on their total score, the top two teams Ngee Ann Secondary School and Dunman Secondary School advanced to a Grand Final – where additional points were awarded in The Battleground for stealing the opponent's tokens.
After a tense showdown, the four-member team from Ngee Ann Secondary triu mphe d.
Lee Jia Qi, 17, a member of the victorious side, said: 'It was kind of unbelievable that we won the competition. It's just a very nice feeling.'
What the Secondary 3 student found most fascinating about AI drones is image recognition.
'Image recognition, if we just code it out, will seem impossible,' he noted. However, by feeding the AI model with images of logos used to mark target spots, the drones were able to land accurately on these spots.
The land robot controlled by eventual winners Ngee Ann Secondary School team, successfully picks up a points token at the National Youth Tech Championship on July 18.
ST PHOTO: CHONG JUN LIANG
The National Youth Tech Championship equips youth with skills to program intelligent agents like these. Its focus aligns with Singapore's National AI Strategy 2.0 which aims to harness AI for the public good.
For this year's iteration, IMDA forged a new partnership with SIT which involved 14 undergraduate mentors guiding participants in training sessions.
Mr Brendan Tan, 24, a second-year software engineering student, said the most rewarding part of mentoring is 'seeing them solve the problems on their own'.
His role saw him troubleshooting code and encouraging the students when they felt demotivated.
SIT student mentor Brendan Tan at the National Youth Tech Championship on July 18.
ST PHOTO: CHONG JUN LIANG
'As tech mentors, we don't give them the right answers,' he explained. 'We point them in the correct direction. What this does is it allows them to understand the technical details of the problems.
'In the future, they can solve similar problems by themselves.'
Minister for Digital Development and Information, Mrs Josephine Teo, who attended the final, said in her closing remarks: 'There is so much we can do for Singapore through digital technologies.'
'I believe that when you bring your passions to the table, not only will you find this to be a very rewarding experience for yourself, you will also find many opportunities to contribute to Singapore,' she added.
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