KUALA LUMPUR: Following Malaysia’s commendable showing at the recently-concluded Rio Olympics, the country has shone yet again, this time at the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union’s (ABU) Robocon 2016.
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) emerged as champions in the Robotics Contest, defeating China’s Northeastern University in the finals held at the Huamark Indoor Stadium in Bangkok, Thailand yesterday.
This is the first time UTM has won the title after 15 attempts.
The runner-up honours were jointly shared by Japan’s University of Tokyo and Indonesia’s Electronic Engineering Polytechnic Institute of Surabaya.
Robocon 2016, themed “Clean Energy Recgharging the World”, saw the participation of 17 universities from 16 countries from the region including South Korea, Hong Kong, India, Pakistan and Thailand.
The competition requires each team to develop two robots. From there, using one of the robots, team members are then required to guide the other robot using magnetic force, wind or any other kind of force while navigating slopes and curves of the set route.
From there, they must get the robot to climb a pole placed at the end of the route, and plant a propeller on top of it within the shortest time.
The UTM team successfully placed the propeller while China’s Northeastern University failed in their attempt.
The ABU Robocon was founded in 2002 by ABU and is broadcast to member nations.
Malaysia last hosted the competition in 2012.