A small robot moves sideways, avoids obstacles, and stops right in front of a row of colored bottles. Its gripper closes slowly, and a bottle of water is lifted a few centimeters without tilting at all, then carried across the arena to a plant. There the bottle is set down, standing upright in the Watering Zone, and the robot returns to Home Base. The whole run is finished in under four minutes, without a single bottle dropped and without a single penalty point.

That scene was repeated in the final round of the Robotics Competition at the 2026 Religion, Science, and Research Olympiad (OASE) III for State Islamic Higher Education Institutions (PTKIN), on Friday, November 6, 2026, on the second floor of the CH Building at UIN Sunan Kalijaga Yogyakarta. The competition, themed "Robots Caring for Life: Ecotheology-Based Robotics Innovation for Environmental Sustainability" and carrying the slogan Navigate, Water, Care, drew 22 PTKIN in the preliminary round, and the ten best teams advanced to the final.

The results: First Place went to UIN K.H. Abdurrahman Wahid Pekalongan with its ELORA robot (score 100; 3 minutes 33.049 seconds). Second Place went to the VectraMove team of UIN Sunan Kalijaga Yogyakarta with its VM-PinPoint robot (score 100; 3 minutes 34.084 seconds). Third Place went to UIN Raden Mas Said Surakarta with its ECO-NAVIGATOR robot (score 100; 4 minutes 4.058 seconds). All three earned perfect scores, so the rankings were decided by time. The gap between first and second place was only about one second.

For the Ministry of Religious Affairs, the most important meaning of this competition is not just the robots' speed. Strengthening ecotheology is one of the Ministry's eight priority programs (Asta Protas) for 2025-2029. Ecotheology positions humans as khalifah fil ardh (stewards of the earth), guardians responsible for maintaining nature's balance. The OASE III technical guidelines made the "ecotheology concept in the robot and design" one of the assessment criteria in the preliminary round. This means every team had to show how religious values became the basis for technical decisions, not just decoration in a paper.

The three winners answered that demand in their own ways. The UIN Gus Dur Pekalongan team built a table mapping Qur'anic verses directly to the components of the ELORA robot. QS. Al-Baqarah [2]: 30, on humans as stewards, is embodied in the robot's main function: helping people care for plants by delivering water. QS. Al-Anbiya' [21]: 30, on water as the source of life, was translated into a pulley lifter that raises bottles vertically so they are never tilted. QS. Al-A'raf [7]: 56, on the prohibition of causing corruption on earth, is reflected in a foam-lined gripper that does not damage bottles and in placement that does not disturb the plant. QS. Ar-Rum [30]: 41 is answered with a rechargeable battery and modular components that can be reused.

The VectraMove team from UIN Sunan Kalijaga, whose members are Ahmad Faiq and Tapa Gabe Tambar (Physics) and Muhammad Haris Ramadhan (Industrial Engineering), emphasized the principle of mizan (balance) and the prohibition of israf (waste). The VM-PinPoint lifting mechanism uses a self-locking worm gear, so the gripper stays at its height without drawing electric current. A speed limiter makes the motor work only as much as the mission requires. The 18650 battery is kept above the safe limit of 3.0 volts per cell to extend its life, and the acrylic frame is laser-cut so that leftover material is minimal.

The UIN Raden Mas Said Surakarta team, Haya Nur Fadhilah, Ahmad Ruhayani Azis, and Luthfiya Zuhura Syifa Fuadah, framed ECO-NAVIGATOR through the lens of maqashid syariah (the higher objectives of sharia), particularly hifzh al-bi'ah (protection of the environment), and linked it to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 9 and 15. The team specifically studied the sloshing effect, the movement of water inside the bottle as the robot accelerates, and addressed it with gradual speed control so the water does not spill.

The most visible impact was in performance on the arena. All three robots completed every mission without penalties: no obstacle touched, no bottle dropped, and no bottle only partly inside the Watering Zone. In ecotheological terms, the water reached the plant whole, not wasted along the way.

That performance was also backed by test data. In ten mission trials with 100, 330, and 600 milliliter bottles, ELORA recorded successful gripping 10/10, bottles dropped 0/10, obstacle contacts 0/10, and bottles standing upright 10/10, with an average time of 67.2 seconds. ECO-NAVIGATOR recorded a 100 percent success rate in tests at the minimum (250 ml bottle) and maximum (600 ml) limits. ELORA's precision mode raised the chance of the gripper aligning with the bottle from 56.5 percent to 95.5 percent. This kind of care is a form of trustworthiness (amanah) in managing resources.

The second impact is energy and material efficiency. All three robots use rechargeable batteries and are lightweight, between 1.3 kg and 3 kg, far below the 10 kg limit. All three are also fitted with failsafe power cut-off switches for safety. These energy-saving and safety principles show that ecotheology values can be measured in numbers: how much current is saved, how much material is not wasted, and how many bottles of water reach the plant intact.

The third impact touches PTKIN's human resources directly. Students from 22 campuses were trained to master ESP32 and Arduino microcontrollers, omni and mecanum wheel kinematics, and testing methodology, while anchoring all of it in the Qur'an. Collaboration across study programs, such as Physics and Industrial Engineering at UIN Sunan Kalijaga, shows that the integration of knowledge that has long been a hallmark of PTKIN can produce competitive work. This is in line with another priority program in the Asta Protas: education that is excellent, friendly, and integrated.

The fourth impact is networking. The ten finalists came from many regions, from Padang, Jambi, and Jakarta to Surabaya and Malang. The panel of judges also came from different campuses: Dr. Iswanto (UMY), Gunawan Budi Susilo, M.Eng. (UIN Sunan Kalijaga), and Shoffin Nahwa Utama, S.Kom., M.T. (UIN Maulana Malik Ibrahim Malang). This gathering strengthens the robotics research ecosystem within the Ministry of Religious Affairs, which can keep growing.

The teams did not stop at the podium. ELORA is designed to be developed into a semi-autonomous robot with a color-recognition camera and distance sensors. VM-PinPoint is being prepared to receive encoders and gyroscope sensors so its movement can be controlled with feedback. ECO-NAVIGATOR will be fitted with an FPV camera and battery telemetry. This roadmap opens the way to smart watering technology that could be used in madrasah gardens, pesantren, and PTKIN campus grounds, as a real expression of the ecotheology movement at the grassroots level.

OASE III PTKIN 2026 shows that the Ministry of Religious Affairs' call for ecotheology has reached the laboratory, not just the pulpit. From the hands of PTKIN students, verses about water, balance, and the prohibition of causing corruption have become foam-lined grippers, current-saving worm gears, and a robot that carries water to the plant without a single bottle falling. This is ecotheology at work: navigate, water, care. (Ir. Muhammad Taufiq Nuruzzaman, Ph.D. and Muhammad Arief Rochman, M.T.)