FIJI’S ROBOCON TEAM WINS NOK AWARD
Fiji, represented by a team of The University of the South Pacific (USP) students, won the NOK award at the ABU Robocon 2019 competition which was held in Ulaanbaataar, Mongolia on the 25th of August 2019 and attended by close to 2500 people. The NOK award was given by the NOK coorperation (Japan) for the steady performance of the MR2 robot. The team had left Fiji on the 21st of August for Mongolia with lots of excitement and nervousness amongst the students. They were accompanied by the Dean of the Faculty of Science, Technology & Environment Associate Professor Anjeela Jokhan, Dr. Sumesh Narayan (Senior Lecturer in Mechanical Engineering), Dr. Sheikh Azid (Lecturer in Electrical/Electronics Engineering) and Mr. Sanjay Singh (Technician in Mechanical Engineering). Fiji was in the pool with Cambodia and Thailand. They won their first game with Cambodia however, Thailand had qualified from the pool to be in the quarterfinals. A total of 17 teams had participated in the contest and the Grand Prix (winning price) was won by Hong Kong. Mongolia was the 1st runner up while China and Vietnam won the 2nd runner up prizes. “Great Urtuu”, inspired by a traditional Mongolian messenger system, was the theme of this year’s competition. The competition had challenged the participants to build one manual and one automatic robotic prototype that had to execute a range of tasks over a miniature Mongolian landscape within three minutes. The Robocon contest in which Fiji has been participating since 2002 provides an excellent opportunity for USP students to showcase their creativity and engineering skills and to also share knowledge with the students from other Universities who come to participate in the contest. The students representing USP were Shyamal Chand, Giraldeau Erone, Sonal Muni, Vivek Shankaran, Shivan Singh and Deepikesh Sharma. The team members mentioned that they were overwhelemed to talk to students with the same profession from different parts of the world and especially when they were doing the exact thing but in different ways and techniques. “This competition has enabled all of our team members to now think of technicial solution not only from a Fijian point of view but to use ideas and innovations used by other countries, mixing ideas and coming up with new strategies for better solutions to problems. Mixing with all the students from various countries made us realise where Fiji is currently at the moment and it has inspired us to keep pushing ourselves to excellence now that we know that we have to lift up our standards so that Fiji can be recognized more throughout the world for its technical and innovative achievements.’ The ABU ROBOCON 2020 will be held in Suva, Fiji, which will be hosted by Fiji TV in August next year for which USP is preparing in full force. The theme of the contest is “Robo Rugby 7s” which was officially annouced at the end of the Robocon 2019 competition in Ulaanbaatar. The contest is to play rugby 7’s game using two robots and five obtacles which will be five defending players. The main challenge is to kick the ball over the cross bar of the conversion post. It would be quite an interesting game as the students will be required to design the robots in such a way that can handle the uniquely shaped rugby ball and kick it.