Innovation Design Thinking in AI-driven Robotics
It was October 2020 and we just put together a collaborative project between me and David Malawey who was on a work break in Malaysia. David was part of the team that started SCUTTLE Robotics at Texas A&M University back in 2018 for their undergraduate mechatronics program. He brought a unit of SCUTTLE robot kit to our 1st meeting in June of that year. I said what do you want me to do with this. “I want to get more people trained on robotics with SCUTTLE platform”, his exact words that get me excited and without much thinking I said yes and let’s do it.
We agreed to kick start the collaboration with an intern to learn about SCUTTLE robot and build the kit with components sourced locally and surrounding region. Meanwhile we put together a mid to long term plan to create a program that utilize SCUTTLE as a platform for learning then solving real world challenges to continue what I did in my previous job at CREST Centre in developing innovative talents and innovate new solutions for the market and community. Fast forward a year, we got the interest of Intel Microelectronics (M) Sdn Bhd to develop an AMR kit based on ROS2 and SCUTTLE mobile robotics platform.
In 2023 we piloted the 1st robotics challenge, called ROBOFUN – ROBOTHON INDUSTRY CHALLENGE, partnering MRANTI, Intel Microelectronics (M) Sdn Bhd and Malaysia Productivity Corporation (MPC). We collaborated with Intel and SCUTTLE Robotics to upgrade the SCUTTLE basic kit to ROS2 capable platform. The SCUTTLE – Intel AMR ROS2 kit was borned and adopted for the robotics challenged.
The following year, in 2024 we collaborated with MRANTI as delivery partner and took the program to central, southern, northern and east cost region of the peninsular where we conducted a 4 days hackathon to teach university students about our AMR ROS2 platform. We selected a total of 50 projects that spent 12 weeks to bring their ideas into working prototypes to address problems in the industry and community. While we had only 13 teams to showcased their prototypes in the 1st Demo Day in October 2023, we are pleased and excited with the 35 teams that showcased the prototypes in the 2nd Demo Day in February 2025. Participants went through a series of Design Thinking online and physical sessions to ensure they capture the right problem to work on and guided in generating ideas and build the prototypes for their project.
From the 1st Demo Day, 3 projects progressed beyond the hackathon phase and continue to enhance their solutions based on their specific customer needs. The winner of the 1st Demo Day, ROBOCOUNT from Universiti Malaya was developed to address the “missing” or “miscounted” parts in the warehouse for a construction company. They won RM100k project funding to develop an MVP for parts identification and counting using the depth camera on the AMR kit.
Two other finalists from the 1st Demo Day, ROBOTRON WORLD from Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia (USIM) and SOTON4HEALTH from University of Southampton Malaysia, further their projects into the LaunchX 2024 Finals. We are pleased to mention a team member of ROBOTRON WORLD is now continuing his own startup Razzbotics developing robotics solution to address challenges in supermarket & hypermarket and secured funding from local VC.
Continuing from the success in 1st Demo Day, the 2nd Demo Day provide a platform for 35 teams to showcase their solutions solving problems in agriculture, healthcare, retail etc. The winning team, MACYBOT from Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia (UTHM) with their medicine delivery robot for the elderly care centre continued to enhance and test their PoC prototype at local elderly centres in Batu Pahat area.
In 2025, we piloted direct collaboration with few universities to develop PoC and/or MVP to address challenges in the retail, automotive and security sector. Our most notable collaboration to date is the Welcoming Robot for car showroom, named HAWA for Human-centric Automotive Welcoming Assistant, developed in collaboration with a startup from UTHM (for the hardware) and ex-intern from Raffles University (for the UI and conversational AI components). To the credits of previous PoC from the robotics challenge like the R2D2 and Wall-E inspired welcoming and guide robots, we managed to prototype 2 versions of MVP for the customer, tested and received feedback to finalise the design of HAWA for the deployment in a car showroom. After several rounds of testings and modifications, HAWA will be greeting and guiding customers to the showroom before end of 2026.
Our next attempt was the development of AI.RA or AI-driven Retail Assistant which is targeting retail stores challenged with supporting customers in selecting the right products (or in this case, shoes) for their leisure or sports activity. The FYP students from UniKL MIIT modelled their project based on al-Ikhsan Sports where they developed the UI and conversational AI to assist customers to select the right shoes for their needs, preferences and budget. And integrated the autonomous navigation of AI.RA robot with the UI to physically guide the customer to the shoes of interest.
All these initial developments started with learning about the KROSSX Open AMR platform (previously SCUTTLE – Intel AMR platform) for the students to learn and familiarize with the ROS2 setup, nodes and codes to map and navigate in the intended environment. Then the student continue to design and build the remaining body, UI and AI components to complete the proposed solution. As these projects are of interest to Katapult Asia, we will make the necessary arrangement to secure a pilot trial or MVP development to bring it closer to market thus making the impact to industry and community.
Interested to learn more about our KROSSX Open AMR platform and work on projects in the service industries, reach out to Dr NorAzmi Alias.
Katapult Asia 