USP PREPARES FOR ABU ROBOCON 2020
The Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union which is the biggest broadcasting union in the world and is based in Japan organises the Asia-Pacific ROBOCON competition every year where over 20 countries in the Asia-Pacific Region take part in this competition. It is an annual robot contest, which started in 2002 for university, college and polytechnic students in the Asia-Pacific region. The contest is hosted by different broadcaster/ country every year and it has two main goals – 1) to create friendship amongst the pariticpants in the event and 2) to help advance engineering and broadcasting technologies in the region. The Engineering students from the School of Engineering and Physics (USP) have been taking part in this competition since 2002, representing Fiji. In the competition the robots are designed to complete a certain task in a set period of time. Each year the competition has different themes and the task is designed according to the theme. A typical game lasts for three minutes but it can end sooner if one of the teams has a knock out (K.O.) victory which immediately ends the game. If none of the teams achieves the K.O. condition then the team that gets the higher score after the 3 minutes is over wins the competition. To build the robots, the contestants who have to be undergraduate students, must have knowledge in programming, mechanical design and electronic circuit design. The game is always between two teams, who are named as red and blue. The playing field has to be symmetrical and the robots from both the teams start at the same condition unless specified. One of the robots would be manually controleld while the rest of the robots are automatic. In December 2017, the Minister of Communications, Hon. Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum accepted ABU’s invitation to host the Asia-Pacific ROBOCON competition in Fiji in August 2020. This will be a historical event for the country and for the students (both School and University) who will have the opportunity to experience this event. Fiji TV and USP will be partnering in organising the event. In preparation for Robocon 2020, a number of events have been organised by USP for 2019 and 2020.These are: 1. Launch of High School Robotics Competition which was held on 22nd May 2019. 2. High School Robotics Theme Competition which was held on June 28 2019. 3. Divisional High School Robocon Competition to be held in May 2020. 4. National High Schools Robocon Competition in August 2020. USP will also participate in the following events organised by the Fiji TV, FBC TV and the Fijian Government 1. 1st National Robocon Contest which was held on June 28 2019 between Fiji National University and The University of the South Pacific. 2. 2nd National Robocon Contest between Fiji National University and The University of the South Pacific in August 2020. 3. International Robocon Contest in August 2020.
Launch of High School Robotics Competition
The School of Engineering and Physics hosted a Soft launch of the High School Robotics Competition on the 22nd of May, at the School of Engineering and Physics 4th Year Laboratory at USP. The events were launched by the Minster of Education, Heritage and Arts, Hon.
Rosy Akbar. Year 13 students from 10 Suva schools were invited as guests to the event. After the launch, the students were invited to view the displays related to Robocon at the laboratory. The students showed a lot of interest while viewing the displays.
USP wins the 1st National Robocon Contest on June 28, 2019
The first ever National Robocon contest was held between Fiji National University and The University of the South Pacific at the International Secondary School Hall in Laucala Beach on the morning of 28th June, 2019. The contest was organised by Fiji TV. This was an inaugural event which will lead to the main Robocon event each year. The winning University will represent the country each year at the competition. The judges of the event were Dr. Patrick Singh (FNU), Dr. Satyanand Singh (FNU), Mr. Binal Raj (USP), Dr. Sumesh Narayan (USP) and Mr. Arai (ABU Japan). The students were asked to design their robots on the 2019 Robocon contest theme which is Mongolia “Great Urtuu”. The mission of the ABU Robocon 2019 Ulaanbaatar is to deliver information by using a relay messenger system – the “Urtuu”, which was first invented in the world by the nomadic Mongolians. For exchanging information in a long distance, Mongolians had been using the Urtuu system as a messenger. Robocon 2019 is designed to promote the idea of “Sharing the knowledge”. USP has designed MR1 to be wireless controlled by PS controller and MR2 is fully automatic 4 leg robot to do the task. The competition was won by The University of the South Pacific.
Nadi SKM College wins the High School Robotics Theme Competition
This theme competition was hosted on the evening of 28th June 2019 at the USP, Laucala Campus. Five finalist schools (Tavua College, Swami Vivekananda College, Naitasiri Secondary School, Yat Sen Secondary School and Nadi Sangam SKM College) were chosen amongst the many that had submitted their posters for the competition and they were invited to USP to present their theme where the judges picked a winner. The judging panel included Dr. Mansour Assaf (Acting Head of School, SEP), Dr. Kabir Mamun (Deputy Head of School, SEP) and Dr. Anjeela Jokhan (Acting Vice President Planning, Quality, Institutional Research & Data and USP Commercial). Mr. Arai and Mr. Yoshida were also present at the event representing ABU Japan. The schools presented some brilliant ideas through their presentation. Nadi Sangam SKM College was declared the winner at the end of the night. They presented on “SASAMAKI” which is an i-taukei phrase for clean-up. They proposed the concept of cleaning up the rugby pitch at the end of the games using robots and centered on the concept of Reuse, Reduce and Recycle. Each team will have three robots; Robot 1 (R1) will be responsible for reuse (paper), Robot 2 (R2) will be responsible for recycle (bottles) and Robot 3 (R3) will be responsible for reduce (plastic). The winners received a tablet each while the school received a laptop. This theme will be the theme for the National High School Robocon Competition which will be held next year.
USP prepares for Mongolia
The team from USP is on the final stages of preparation for the competition in Mongolia this year. The students representing USP are: Shyamal Chand, Giraldeau Erone, Sonal Muni, Vivek Shankaran, Shivan Singh and Deepikesh Sharma. Vivek Shankaran mentioned that the domestic competition has given them enough exposure to identify the strengths and drawbacks of the robot designed for the Mongolia competition and will enable them to address it before they ship the robots for the competition. He also stated that the engineering program at USP has helped him gain a lot of knowledge to prepare for the event. Past year Robocon Pictures The students will be leaving for Mongolia on the 21st of August, 2019. “From the design knowledge gained from 100 level courses to the complex analysis, control systems settings and software coding techniques gained in the advance level courses, the scope which the units cover at The University of the South Pacific became a lot relevant and useful in constructing the robot. The control of individual motor movements for the maneuvering of the robot and the operation of the mechanical components of the robot need precise engineering skills in order for the robot to operate efficiently and the University has done an excellent job in incorporating these skills required into specific units which are covered in the BE program at the University”.