Nguyen Bao Ngoc, born in 1994 in Dak Lak province, is currently living and working in Ho Chi Minh City. Graduating in the petroleum engineering sector of the Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology, Ngoc was passionate about information technology while still at university. With the efforts and guidance of teachers, he was accepted to participate in the 11th scientific conference for universities in Southeast Asia.
Bao Ngoc (third from left) and his team with robot Beetlebot (Photo: tienphong.vn)
Currently, Ngoc is the technical leader of Robotics and AI of AIOZ company. In April 2020, he and his teammates won a first prize and a second prize of the "Hack Covy" contest - the first online Hackathon contest with the goal of creating technology solutions to cope with issues caused by COVID-19 in Vietnam, organized by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in Vietnam in collaboration with the Hanoi Youth Union and AngelHack.
Although he had a passion for information technology, a big difficulty for him was that he didn’t have a background in programming knowledge.
“Initially, I faced protests and doubts from my family and friends about the change in my career, but right after graduating from university I spent about 4 months to start to learn programming by myself at home. I always have inferiority complex because of the loss to others in the industry, so I always strive not to lose them too far,” the boy shared.
One of the projects of AIOZ company which applies to the current COVID-19 pandemc is Robot Beetlebot with the outstanding features "Reducing virus infection risk for health workers" led by Ngoc as the technical team leader.
“Beetlebot was formerly an outdoor delivery robot. My teammates and I have adjusted the technology and designed a new version with new features and materials to use in the environments of healthcare, restaurants and hotels.
Beetlebot can help health workers at the front lines to limit their direct contact with patients. Health workers just schedule a destination on mobile phone, the Beetlebot will automatically move without human control and deliver ingredients to isolated patients to limit cross contamination. In addition, Beetlebot also has many other outstanding features such as: supporting health workers to examine, disinfect, warn and remind patients to wear face masks and keep a safe distance.
Ngoc hopes to have more and more AI and Robotics products being used in daily life such as: the AI system helps identify license plates, reading product serial numbers and warnings. More importantly, combinating AI and Robotics to reduce heavy work or danger jobs for people in order to support to solve urgent problems of organizations, society and enterprises. He believes that Vietnam will become an automated country with the appearance of AI and Robot in the near future.
“For me, having passion is normal, but keeping passion always burning is difficult. I hope young people in any sector, if you have pursued your passion, then keep your spirit to always be alert, steady and pursue it to the end. Although you face doubts and protests from anyone, you should prove that they have underestimated yourself and your passion,” the young engineer shared./.