UoSM Engineering Students Honoured with Judges’ Commendation Award at SAFMC 2025

The University of Southampton Malaysia (UoSM) is pleased to announce that a team of five exceptional undergraduate students has been awarded the prestigious Judges’ Commendation Award at the Singapore Amazing Flying Machine Competition (SAFMC) 2025. This recognition is a testament to the team’s technical proficiency, innovative thinking, and commitment to engineering excellence.

Comprising Lim Kai Shan, Teh Jin Qian, Chang Siang Yi, and Lim Tong En from Year 2, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, alongside See Jun Yee from Year 2, Mechanical Engineering, the student team impressed a panel of industry and academic experts with their project — a voice-controlled drone designed for autonomous object retrieval.

The SAFMC, organised annually by DSO National Laboratories and the Singapore Science Centre, is widely regarded as one of the region’s most competitive platforms for young innovators in the field of aerospace and flight technologies. The competition challenges participants to apply advanced engineering principles in the design, construction, and operation of unmanned aerial systems. Competing against top institutions across Southeast Asia, the UoSM team’s project stood out for its integration of voice recognition technology with precision control systems — demonstrating a thoughtful response to real-world applications in search-and-rescue operations, logistics, and automated retrieval systems.

The development of the drone involved months of collaborative effort, from the conceptualisation of the design to the refinement of control algorithms and hardware integration. The students drew upon their academic training and practical engineering skills, working closely under the guidance of faculty mentors from both the Electrical and Electronic Engineering and Mechanical Engineering departments.

This achievement not only celebrates the students’ hard work and ingenuity, but also underscores UoSM’s continued dedication to producing highly skilled engineers equipped to address complex global challenges through technology and innovation.

As the university continues to invest in interdisciplinary learning, research opportunities, and industry collaborations, accomplishments such as this reinforce our position as a leading institution in engineering education.

We extend our sincere congratulations to the student team and look forward to seeing their future contributions to the field.