Compiled by ZAKIAH KOYA, C.ARUNO AND R.ARAVINTAN
A FINAL-YEAR Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) student developed an autonomous robot capable of detecting and harvesting loose oil palm fruits, reported Kosmo!.
The invention by Ahmad Faris Ahmad Fuad, 23, a Bachelor of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering student, could help ease labour shortages at oil palm plantations while improving productivity.
Ahmad Faris, specialising in mechanisation and automation, developed the robot to reduce the time, effort and manpower required for manual fruit collection.
The robot uses computer vision technology to identify loose oil palm fruits and collect them automatically.
The project cost RM500, was supervised by Dr Muhamad Saufi Mohd Kassim, and involved upgrading an existing electromechanical platform.
For his effort, Faris received a silver medal at UPM’s Final Year Project Exhibition, titled “Autonomous Mobile Robot Using Monocular Vision Systems for Oil Palm Loose Fruit Collection”.
He also won a gold award with his team at the MyCobot Challenge during the Annual Regional Convention 2025 at Maejo University in Thailand.
> A man who helped push a massage chair as one of the gifts during the wedding ceremony of Malaysian singer Bella Astillah and politician Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman on Saturday was not part of the gift-bearing entourage, reported Sinar Harian.
Shairy Hanapiah revealed on his Threads account, saying that he received a call from Amira Aisya at 11.25pm on the eve of the ceremony, asking for his help.
Shairy admitted he was amused when he saw a picture of the massage chair, adding that Syed Saddiq insisted on presenting the actual items rather than photographs or replicas during the ceremony.
Despite having no rehearsal, Shairy said everything went smoothly, entertaining viewers watching the live broadcast.
The couple exchanged vows in a ceremony held at Menara Merdeka Maybank.
(The above articles are compiled from the vernacular newspapers (Bahasa Malaysia, Chinese and Tamil dailies). As such, stories are grouped according to the respective language/medium. Where a paragraph begins with a >, it denotes a separate news item.)
