Students gear up for robotics competition
ENGINEERING students from The University of the South Pacific have been gearing up since March for an international robot contest in August aiming to showcase their theoretical knowledge in real-time.
The robocon team comprises four electrical and four mechanical students, with staff members contributing significantly.
Lecturer for Electrical Engineering and Robocon instructor, Dr Sheikh Azid said USP had been participating in the ABU Asia-Pacific robot contest since 2002.
“This year’s competition will be held in Delhi, but last week we came to note that the competition will be held online because some of the countries are not able to participate due to the border restrictions,” he said.
“The end goal of the competition is to promote the field of robotics and get the universities to come to one arena and share ideas in terms of building robots.
“Electrical students are doing work in terms of programming, electrical wiring and the control of the vehicle while the mechanical students are working towards the manufacturing of the claws, the design, and the structure.
“So they are on their own, but we do go and check their progress. However the design and all it’s all their ideas, we just guide them.”
He said one of the challenges was getting parts for the design of the robots, with shipment delays being an issue.
“For example, in China, they just walk across the street to buy parts for the robots and with us, since we are isolated, we have to wait for the shipment of parts.”
He said USP had a good team every year and this year’s goal was to reach the semi-finals and get students to receive international exposure.
The theme of the contest, ‘Lagori’, is derived from a traditional ancient game originating from India.
The game is between two teams, team one - seeker and team two-hitter where the game starts with the seeker throwing a ball to break a stone tower called Lagori.
While the seeker tries to pile up the Lagori discs again, the hitter throws balls to interrupt them.