Duo eye big win for their ‘screen time’ robot at global contest

Gadget helps users keep a safe viewing distance from phones, tracks screen time

- Sarah Koh

As avid Lego builders, primary school pupils Skylar Chua and Elon Chan found that reading building instructions online was straining their eyes.

On top of this, the next-door neighbours were used to seeing their friends scrolling endlessly on their phones for hours.

To tackle this screen-time problem, the duo put their minds together and spent most of their Sundays for the past year building RoboBuddies — a multipurpose robot that can help sort toys and also promote healthier screen-time habits.

“We heard Prime Minister Lawrence Wong talk about this issue during the National Day Rally, and saw that a recent survey showed that parents are concerned about their children having too much screen time,” nine-year-old Elon said.

“That gave us the confidence to know that we were solving a real problem.”

Made up of more than 50 Lego parts, a camera, 3D-printed materials, wires and wheels, RoboBuddies is designed to hold phones and move back and forth to help users keep a safe viewing distance from their screen.

It measures the distance to the user and moves backwards automatically if it senses that the user’s head has moved forward.