Saud Al Shammari: From breaking toys to assembling the fastest robot in Saudi Arabia!

When we talk about Saud Al Shammari, we are talking about a young man of seventeen years old, who invented four inventions and provided many training courses, which reflects that he was not an ordinary young man, and that a bright future awaits him.

He is Saud bin Abdulaziz Al Shamri, a third-year high school student, science stream, at Al-Dafy Secondary School in Jubail Industrial City.

These achievements did not happen in one moment, but were preceded by an intelligent upbringing, under a conscious upbringing, which began with the hobby of breaking toys.

Cracking games was just the beginning!

He started by breaking toys, destroying household appliances, then fixing them, and finally came up with four inventions!

Saud says about his childhood that breaking toys was not only his best hobby, but it was an instinct that ran in his blood. It developed until, at the age of seven, he was dismantling old devices and identifying their components, which was annoying to his mother at the time. However, she soon realized that what Saud was doing was a hobby that had nothing to do with any destructive behavior. After that, she began to assign him the task of repairing any broken device in the house.

When Saud reached the age of ten, his father registered him in the Royal Commission for Robotics Club, as working on a robot depends on skills in design, assembly and programming, skills that Saud was passionate about and fond of after his passion for the hobby of breaking toys and repairing broken devices.

Gradually, the passion turned into a challenge, and Saud Al Shammari was able to win fourth place in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in the 2008 World Robot Olympiad. Through the Olympiad, Saud’s robot was crowned as the fastest robot to perform tasks in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

After that, Saud's successes in the field of robotics continued, as he won first place in the First Lego competition at the level of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and fourth place at the level of the Arab countries, in the Arab Open Robotics Championship held in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

He also won second place in the Saudi Robo (3) competition, supervised by the Ministry of Education, at the Eastern Province level, and also won the same place in the Royal Commission Robotics Olympiad at the Eastern Province level in 2011.

In the same year 2011, Saud won first place in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for the best scientific project in the First Lego World Competition, and first place in free projects in the Saudi Robo Competition for the year 2011.

From curiosity to invention:

In middle school, Saud participated for the first time in his life in the Intel ISEF Science and Engineering Fair organized by Mawhiba, out of curiosity and just to learn about the program. After that, he was able to present to his country four different inventions and three training packages to teach students how to stimulate their creative and innovative abilities, how to become successful inventors, and finally how to assemble the educational robot (NXT).

His most notable achievement in the field of invention was his invention being nominated among 852 inventions to participate in the 2010 International Innovation Exhibition, and he received the Bronze Medal. He also received the National Center for Youth Research Award from King Saud University for his project “Suctioning and Utilizing Factory Fumes.”

His sense of suffering of people with special needs led him to invent the "grateful walk" and the smart helmet!

His latest achievement in the field of invention is that his invention “Grateful Walk” won second place in the National Olympiad for Scientific Creativity “Ibd’a” out of 123 participating projects, and qualified him to compete globally for the Expo World Innovation Award, which will be held in Slovakia.  

Saud Al Shammari's Innovations and Projects: The first innovation: "Grateful Walk" An innovation that hides the problem of limping and ends the psychological suffering resulting from it!   Saud Al Shammari says that he had a strong desire to help people with special needs, and after serious thinking and an urgent desire, he finally came up with the idea of ​​his winning innovation, "Grateful Walk", which is a shoe that helps a lame person who suffers from a deficiency in the length of one of his legs, to walk in a balanced and sound manner, and thus avoid any effects resulting from the problem of limping, whether health (physical) or psychological. This innovation is distinguished by the fact that it does not only treat the problem of limping, but also completely hides it, which is what makes it different from other innovations that treat the same problem, as once the lame person wears the shoe, he will be able to walk in a balanced and sound manner, and no one will notice his limping. Al-Shammari explains that: “He used springs distributed throughout the foot, placing them under the shoe, to compensate for the lack of leg length. He also placed springs for the missing leg that are stronger than the other foot so that the feet are on the same level. It is worth noting that this innovation is characterized by its ability to reduce the pressure on the foot resulting from gravity during walking, which causes many problems, including arthritis and back pain, because the feet will hit the ground successively, not directly. The second innovation: The auxiliary pressure shoe is a shoe that protects against sunstroke and inflates the ball!   The “grateful walk” was not the first shoe invented by Saud Al-Shammari. Before it, he invented a shoe that helps raise the level of occupational health and safety while performing vital functions, and eliminates the symptoms of heat stress and sunstroke. It can also be used at the same time as an inflation tool, such as inflating a ball, a bicycle wheel, and others. The idea of ​​this innovation revolves around springs placed inside the shoe to generate a dynamic movement while pressing on it, through which air is pushed into the chambers connected between the shoe and its suit.   In addition, the wearer can connect a hose from the air outlet in the shoe to a piece he wants to inflate, whether a ball or a bicycle wheel, where the inflation process is done automatically after pressing on the shoe. The third innovation: The smart helmet A smart helmet that gives blind people confidence and self-reliance!   For a period of time, Saud Al-Shammari was searching for an idea through which he could help blind people with special needs, until he finally came up with the idea of ​​the smart helmet. Transforming the idea from the world of fantasy to reality, Saud supported one of the helmets with sensors that were programmed to sense nearby obstacles, which are one meter away, so that they give audio alerts, accompanied by a slight vibration to the person as soon as he approaches these obstacles, to warn against colliding with them, and the sound of these vibrations increases the closer the person gets to these obstacles. Saud hopes that his innovation will contribute to giving blind people self-reliance and complete confidence while walking around. Fourth: Developing a new method to extract factory fumes and benefit from their gases   In addition to the above, Saud Al Shammari prepared a research project through which he was able to develop a new method for extracting factory smoke, benefiting from its gases, and reducing the spread of CO2 in the atmosphere, by creating artificial rain by collecting nitrogen and carbon dioxide gases while they are being emitted into the outside air, in an innovative and scientific way, where they are exposed to pressure and freezing until they turn into solid materials. After that, they are placed in special containers, to be transported by special planes and then sprayed over the clouds, thus a condensation process occurs in which the water droplets in the clouds crystallize with the frozen gases and then fall - God willing - and on their way to the ground they begin to melt and (N2) clings to them. In this way, we have been able to reduce the spread of carbon dioxide gas - the main cause of global warming and the damage it causes - and we will also be able to use it in agriculture as a type of artificial fertilizer, and maintain an underground water reserve, and finally we have contributed to eliminating sand encroachment. Saud Al Shammari is a young Saudi man who was able to use his curiosity as a way to think about his four innovations, and to use his love of giving as a reason to provide three training bags at an early age, and to use his passion for achievement as a means to win first place in a number of local and international scientific forums.