Robotics event receives better response this year By Safrah Mat Salleh
KOTA KINABALU: Sabah’s premier community robotics event, RoboNeo, received an overwhelming response this year with a total of 101 teams participating in the robotics competition.
Resource Development and Information Technology Minister Datuk Siringan Gubat said the event commenced in 2014 and this is the fourth year of the event held in Sabah.
“We can see that this year has more progress compared to the previous years and there are also more innovations and challenging innovations displayed.
“The improvement is very obvious and today they have the robot combat, which is a new innovation for this year,” he said.
Meanwhile, Sabah Resource Development and Information Technology Ministry Technical Services Division IT head Disney Edward Lai said the event welcomed participants from all walks of life.
“This year, we have an overwhelming response not only from the community but because this is an open event, we have participants not only from schools but also from public institutes of higher learning and individual participation.
“In this year’s participation, we have participants from as far as Bintulu and Kota Samarahan, Sarawak, and from Sabah itself we have from Tawau, Kudat and Membakut.
“For the first year we only had 11, second year 20, last year we had 40 teams, and this year we have 101 teams. Last year we only had about 40 (teams) because we did not have a lot of categories last year,” he said.
He also said the 101 participating teams competed in five categories, where last year there were only four categories.
The five categories of the robotic challenges were RbnSumoauto, Rbn-Auto, Rbn-Rero, Rbn-Combat and Rbn-Iot.
He also said the event was not all about robotics but also about knowledge and skills used by the participants in making the automatons.
The three-day event started on Friday at Suria Sabah Mall here and the closing as well as prize presentation ceremony will be held today.
Also present were the ministry’s permanent secretary, Datuk Bruno Vun, and the deputy secretary to the Science, Technology and Innovation Ministry, Professor Mady Dr Ramzah Dambul.