STEAM Education: Egypt Grand Challenges
Egypt Grand Challenge: Work to eradicate public health issues/disease.
Big Idea:
Mobile robots for temperature measurement in public spaces and points of entry provide a useful use of
established technologies for diagnosis and screening. Multiple individuals in broad areas can often be
screened at once using automated video systems. The effectiveness and scope of screening could be
improved by integrating these heat sensors and vision algorithms onto autonomous or remotely
controlled robots. Medical robotics are used as application-specific areas of development to highlight
the substantial societal and health impacts.
Plant-Based Remedies and contaminated plant food can enhance a potential endemic in Egypt. Using
soft-computing Applications and robotics systems to control and approve safety can ensure the
prevention of such endemic.
The dirty of water and Population growth and the spread of slums cause the spread of disease
among the community that require assistance and the possibilities to address these diseases, there
are other factors to address those diseases.
Essential Question:
How can Egypt use automated control of machining tools to serve, prevent or control several public
health issues and diseases?
Design Challenge:
One of the Egyptian Grand Challenges is to eradicate public health issues/disease. To support this
Challenge, you are asked to design and build a physical prototype of a robot or system appropriate for
development in any public health concern. To prepare for this work, study a plant based or human
based public health issue and identify at most three (3) appropriate design requirements (weather
monitoring this health concern, measuring it, controlling or preventing it) for your system that will be
expected to withstand Egypt’s environmental forces and resources and is ethically accepted.
Your design requirements can be chosen from (but not limited to) the following topics:
(1) Specific implementation to better measure health issue outputs
(2) Controlling the spread of infectious diseases by visualizing or sensing symptoms
Identify a testable design requirement for your system that connects to a learning outcome. You will
design a way to test, measure and record data about your output for the design requirement you
choose.
Suggestions for the thinking scope.
A. Robotics in Monitoring Plant Health detection and grading systems.
Use your understanding of Motion and vectors to control a robot movement in a plant field. Studying
Botany would enrich your back ground of plant systems and health.
“For such a monitoring system, a few assumptions are considered:
1. Mobile robot moves along a specified path.
2. Images are taken under field conditions to distinguish healthy from unhealthy leaves.
3. Monitoring plant health in a greenhouse environment with uniform terrain for movement.” (Rizk,
2017).
B. Sustained research in robotics to address the potential risks of infectious diseases.
“Robots have the potential to be deployed for disinfection, delivering medications and food, measuring
vital signs, and assisting border controls. As epidemics escalate, the potential roles of robotics are
becoming increasingly clear.” (Yang et al., 2020).
References:
Rizk, H. (2017).Automated early plant disease detection and grading system: Development and
implementation [Master's Thesis, the American University in Cairo]. AUC Knowledge Fountain.
https://fount.aucegypt.edu/etds/174
Yang, G. Z., J. Nelson, B., Murphy, R. R., Choset, H., Christensen, H., H. Collins, S., Dario, P., Goldberg, K.,
Ikuta, K., Jacobstein, N., Kragic, D., Taylor, R. H., & McNutt, M. (2020, March 25). Combating COVID-19—
The role of robotics in managing public health and infectious diseases. Science Robotics, 5(40).
https://doi.org/10.1126/scirobotics.abb5589
