Crowds thrill to action of 'takraw'-playing robots
Crowds thrill to action of 'takraw'-playing robots
Zakki Hakim, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Both teams were very tense, then the whistle blew.
The red team aimed the ball at the ring, and it went in.
Two more points for the red team.
Supporters were uneasy with the situation.
The opposing blue team now went to shoot.
And yes, it went in perfectly. A total of five points for the
blue team.
Hundreds of spectators went wild, cheering and singing at the
same time, rocking the hall where the game took place.
The final score was 24 to 18 for the blue team.
Was it a basketball game?
No, it was not. One would never guess, judging from the
euphoria of the crowd, that it was actually a game played by
robots. Who could have thought that a takraw (ball made of
rattan) ball game played by steel-cold robots could be so
entertaining and thrilling?
The game was a part of the Indonesian Robot Competition 2003,
held on Saturday in the hall of the University of Indonesia (UI),
Depok, "Takraw Game Spirit of Asia."
It was a very unique event, with robots trying to find their
own way and insert balls into 27 baskets in a six-meter-diameter
area. More interesting and delighting was that the robots were
made by Indonesian students.
About 60 robots designed by 32 teams from 25 universities from
across the country participated in the competition, with the
winner to represent Indonesia in the Asia Pacific Robot
Competition in Bangkok, Thailand, in August.
The winner was A.I. Syah, a robot designed by a team from the
Sepuluh November Institute of Technology (ITS) Polytechnic in
Surabaya.
The competition has been held four times since 1994, all in
Surabaya. This year was the first time for the competition to be
held in Jakarta.
Dadet Pramadihanto, coach of the winning team, told The
Jakarta Post that the competition in Surabaya usually attracted
treble of those attending the competition that day.
"Maybe there is a lack of promotion or the event simply is
considered not interesting by Jakartans," he said.
He said such a competition was very important, because it
showed the real potential of Indonesian human resources to the
public.
"The industry can see from this competition that Indonesian
youngsters are capable of designing such complicated robots,
which proved even better than those made by foreigners," he said.
In fact, teams from ITS have been dominating robot
competitions in the last couple of years. In 2001, a team from
the institute won an International Robot Competition in Koriyama,
Japan, held by NHK TV station.
The winning robot in the 2001 competition was called B-Cak.
Dadet said that more attention was needed for such a
competition to provoke youngsters' creativity.
Leader of the winning team, Hasan Habibi, said he participated
in the competition because of his hobby in mechanical
engineering.
Meanwhile, Arkhadi Pustaka, a member of the runner-up team
from Gadjah Mada University (UGM) in Yogyakarta, said that his
team's intention was to motivate their younger classmates to
participate in the competition next year.
"This is the first time UGM has participated. We have no
target so far. It's a hobby and we basically did it just for
fun," he said.