40 take part in inaugural IEEE Sarawak robotics competition
KUCHING: The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers ( IEEE) Sarawak Subsection in collaboration with Faculty of Engineering, Computing & Science of Swinburne University of Technology Sarawak Campus held the inaugural IEEE Sarawak Robotics Competition here recently.
The competition, which was organised as part of efforts to promote Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics ( STEM) education in Sarawak, saw 40 secondary school students competing in Junior and Senior categories.
The participants were challenged with the tasks of programming an intelligent robot that is able to manoeuvre through the track autonomously.
SMK Batu Lintang emerged as the champion in the Junior category followed by SMK Jalan Arang and SMK Kuching High as the first and second runners-up respectively while SMK Sungai Maong claimed first place in the Senior category, beating two teams from SMK Jalan Arang who won second and third place.
In the Junior category, students from Forms 1 to 3 competed in the Roborace challenge where they were required to programme a robot to race through the track in the shortest possible time while maintaining the robot within the track.
The robots were designed to be fully autonomous and able to adapt to the track which was not made known to the participants prior to the race.
Meanwhile, the Senior category participants comprising Forms 4 to 6 students had to devise a robot to compete in the Pathfinder challenge.
In this challenge, the robot was required to manoeuvre through a labyrinth and find the correct exit without prior knowledge of the labyrinth configuration.
In both categories, the participants were not only tested for the lap time but also on the robot performance and the robustness of the algorithm that they designed.
Prior to this competition, the participants were trained in the one- day boot camp on introduction to robotics as well as basics in robot programming.