From Start to Startup: Dauda Barry, Mahadi Hasan and Adama Robotics
If you're going to try, go all the way.
This article was written by Frederick Daso in 2017 when he was a student at MIT as part of his Entrepreneurship, Student Voices, What Inspires Me series.
The robot’s tiny wheels make a smooth sound as they rotate. The robot occasionally beeps as it detects an obstacle. Detecting the wall, it immediately reverses its direction, then turns right after moving back a couple of inches. The robot continues these obstacle-avoidance manoeuvres until a hand from above comes down and picks its body up. There’s nothing it can do now. Rapidly rotating its wheels back and forth in the hopes of escaping, the robot desperately tries to break free.
But what can it do? The person who is carrying the robot presses the power button on the case, freezing the tires in place and powering off the robot as a whole. The robot is then gently placed in a plastic container for safekeeping.
This person, Dauda Barry, had been studying the motion of the robot on the tabletop. He was in charge of programming the Arduino, which quickly processed the speed and location of the robot, and then determined the motion of the robot in order to avoid an obstacle based on the inputs from the ultrasound sensor which functioned as the robot’s “eyes.” Dauda and the team had put a lot of time and effort into building this prototype named Skippy, and their work had finally come to fruition.
He was interested in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) subjects from an early age. His passion initially focused on physics throughout his secondary school days. He loved physics for its immediate applicability in everyday life. He was comfortable with the math underlying physics – algebra and calculus came to him with ease. However, later towards the end of secondary school, he felt his interest in physics waning, and his excitement about computer science started to grow in turn. He began to love computer science for not only its applicability like physics, but also the immediate impact one can have with just a few lines of code. Writing his first program in secondary school opened his mind to the power of a computer.
With that novel experience under his belt, he headed to Queen Mary, University of London to pursue a degree in Computer Science. At Queen Mary, Dauda specialised and invested the majority of his time in Robotics and Artificial Intelligence. Outside of academics, he was the founder and president for two academic years of the Robotics and Artificial Intelligence Society. In its third year as a university-sanctioned society, The Robotics and AI Society remarkably achieved 75 paying members who were interested in learning more about the field from experienced professionals in industry and professors in academia. Also, they wanted opportunities to get hands on experience in these two areas.
Dauda organised and chaired regular events with remarkable experts and leading academics in Robotics and AI, created a learning environment for those unfamiliar with the fields of Robotics and AI, and robotics building workshops during his tenure in the Robotics and AI Society. All this helped to create a sense of community around a shared passion around these subjects.
During his presidency of the club, he thought about building a company that would sell low-cost, programmable robotics kits to individuals interested in learning more about computer science and robotics. Dauda Barry and his fellow committee members’ passion for robotics and AI combined with their entrepreneurial spirit came together to create Adama Robotics.
They worked on building a business plan and video demonstrations of their prototype robots. Tutorials on how to program Arduinos and an instruction manual of how to assemble the electronic components were included in their robotics kits.
They received funding from pitch competitions to build three different prototypes, giving them a chance to go through the full product development lifecycle.
Right now, Adama Robotics is focused on strengthening their foundations, growing their customer base and scaling up their business. Dauda and his team deeply believe that learning how to code is akin to learning the alphabet and they find that robotics and computing are becoming more important everyday. Their ultimate goal is to eliminate the digital divide between the different socioeconomic classes within a country and between developing and developed nations in their access to STEM and its opportunities.
Their motto is, “Reducing the digital divide, one robot at a time.”
And they are getting closer every day.
Hasta la vista!
Dauda Barry