HKUST Underwater Robot Competition Reaches Its 10th Year to Encourage Youths of Different Backgrounds to Collaborate through iSTEAM

The HKUST Underwater Robot Competition 2025 provided a unique opportunity for over 100 primary and secondary school students and teachers from 24 different schools to enhance their robotics skills, collaborate across schools, and most importantly, embrace diversity.

Hosted by the Center for Global and Community Engagement and supported by the Academy for Bright Future Young Engineers, both under the HKUST School of Engineering, this annual contest aims to provide experiential learning in iSTEAM (inclusion, Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics) education through robotics. Launched in 2015, the competition has reached its 10th anniversary this year. It empowers HKUST undergraduates from various disciplines to mentor and guide Primary 4 to Secondary 3 students from diverse backgrounds, including the underprivileged, ethnic minorities, and students with special educational needs (SEN) or disabilities. Teachers without prior knowledge of robotics or science were also welcome to join and experience the fun of building underwater robots with their students.

Participants from 15 schools and 9 schools attended a training workshop on March 29 and 30 respectively. With the guidance of HKUST’s undergraduate students, they gained fundamental knowledge of designing and controlling underwater robots. Using the knowledge, the participants worked in teams to design and build their own underwater robots to take part in the inter-school competition.

The theme of this year’s competition was “Treasure of Ocean”, where the robots are required to complete various underwater missions within a set time limit to achieve the highest score. Teams also needed to find clues from different missions to solve an equation by the end of each round. The game rules and judging of the competition was designed and supported by the HKUST STEAM Tutor Team, which is trained to develop and deliver STEAM related programs and comprises HKUST undergraduates in various disciplines.


Primary and secondary school teams took part in the inter-school competition with their underwater robots.


The teams also needed to solve an equation by the end of each round.

The joint-school competition took place on the same day, following the inter-school competition. Three teams with different backgrounds (comprising both primary and secondary school teams) were grouped together to collaborate and undertake another set of underwater missions with their robots. A key feature of the program, this joint-school competition tested students’ ability to communicate and work effectively with peers from a wide spectrum. One Best Joint-School Inclusion Award was finally presented to a joint team that exhibited exceptional collaboration and teamwork.


The joint-school competition provided a chance for the students to engage in cross-school collaboration.


School teams reunited again at HKUST to participate in a tricycle workshop in the morning of the award presentation ceremony day (May 10, 2025).

The program concluded with an award presentation ceremony in the afternoon of May 10. To further engage the participants, a tricycle workshop was held in the morning of the ceremony day.

The winners of the competition are as follows:

To further recognize participants’ effort, achievement levels of gold, silver, and bronze were awarded to the teams respectively. Overall, the teams performed well and demonstrated a good spirit of collaboration.

Prof. Mow Wai-Ho, Associate Dean of Engineering (Undergraduate Studies), School of Engineering, HKUST (first right), Prof. Tim Woo, Director of the Center for Global and Community Engagement, School of Engineering, HKUST (first left), Prof. Tsui Chi-Ying, Director of the Academy for Bright Future Young Engineers, School of Engineering, HKUST (second left), and Dr. Roy Chung, Founder of Bright Future Charitable Foundation (second right), celebrated the 10th anniversary of HKUST Underwater Robot Competition at the award presentation ceremony.