KUALA LUMPUR: A Malaysian-built robot beat 74 others en route to claiming the Southeast Asia Combat Robot Competition 2013 (Robotwars) champion’s title.
Its creator, an officer and three Universiti Malaysia Perlis (UniMAP) students, focused on empowering the robot with high defensive abilities before fielding it in the competition.
“It was challenging with great participants but we managed to put up a strong defence against our opponents,” said Team DCEN leader Mohd Nazri Abu Bakar, 35.
The vocational training officer and three students – Mohd Shahrawi Abdul Ghapar, 23, Mohamad Nazrin Amin Salleh, 23, and Atiq Satar Abdul Satar, 20, from the Electrical Engineering Technology (Industrial Power) programme – spent a month building the robot.
“This is our first competition so we felt that we should not be too aggressive before knowing our opponents’ strength. We will focus on attack and build a more aggressive robot next year,” he said.
The group eliminated 74 other teams from 38 higher learning institutions in Malaysia, Laos and Singapore to walk away with the title and prize money of RM20,000.
Robotwars, which acts as a platform for higher education students to exchange views and put in practice their academic knowledge competitively, was held at the National Science Centre here from Oct 7 to 13.
Each team – with a maximum of four people – was required to go on a one-on-one fight and the team that successfully disables the opponent’s robot, or pushes it into the “Death Pit” would be the winner.
Runner-up of the event and the Best Engineering Award went to Team CON-Q, also from UniMAP, while Team Bertam 2 from Institut Latihan Perindustrian Kepala Batas won the Best Design Award 1 prize.Team SCMT from Soutsaka College of Management and Technology in Laos come up with a robot that caught the eyes of the judges.
The team walked away with the Best Design Award 2 prize and RM5,000.
College director Vanhkham Souligna said she was proud of the students although they did not win the tournament.
“Our education authorities informed us some two months ago, so we did not have much time to prepare for this,” she said, adding that she would spread the message to other institutions in Laos and hoped more teams would take part in the event next year.
– THE STAR
