Local robots put to the test in competition
Local robots put to the test in competition
M. Taufiqurrahman, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Racing against the clock, Spidey moved slowly along a narrow
corridor before hitting a white wall. After pondering which way
he would take to get to the fire, he managed to extinguish a
flame that had been burning for some time.
Now, he had to complete the daunting task of finding his way
back to the spot where he had made his first move. However, after
three steps, the odd-looking creature twitched before making his
last move.
No, the scene is not from a new Spiderman movie. In fact, it
was a mishap that transpired during a robot competition organized
by the Ministry of National Education on Sunday, and the above
mentioned hero was a six-legged, battery-powered robot
manufactured by students from Surabaya-based Petra Christian
University.
Spidey, properly written "SPY-D", failed to take part in the
subsequent "smart robot" contest after failing to accomplish its
mission assigned in a preliminary contest.
SPY-D's defeat paved the way for a far superior robot designed
by students from Gadjah Mada University, Klepon.
Named after a traditional Javanese snack, Klepon was a two-
wheeled robot whose designers expected to be capable of
accomplishing more complicated tasks.
Entered in the "expert" category, Klepon was programmed to
extinguish fire from a candle, identify a baby doll equipped with
light-emitting diodes functioning as a decoy and find its way
back.
During a rehearsal, Klepon managed to detect the heat source
with an ultraviolet sensor and send electronic signals to a mini-
fan that later created a light breeze, enough to put out the fire
from the candle.
However, in the contest, Klepon was seen to be at a loss over
how to find its way to the heat source and repeatedly bumped into
wooden walls, part of a maze that functioned as a circuit.
"Technically speaking, we were ready to join the contest, but
there have been numerous nontechnical constraints that hampered
the way for Klepon to accomplish its mission," Vidiansyah, team
member from the Yogyakarta-based university told The Jakarta
Post.
UGM entered four teams in the annual competition.
The third-year student said that team members had fed
information about the maze passages into Klepon's brain,
microcontrol-based software, so that the robot could move about
freely and executed its given tasks.
Virdiansyah said that it took a month for his team to build
the Rp 2 million robot, with almost half of the period being used
to design the robot's brain.
A contest judge, Muljo Widodo, said that in the "smart robot"
category there had been an increase in the number of devices that
could accomplish the assigned tasks.
"Now we have seven robots that can accomplish the given
mission of both putting out the flames and going up a ramp to
find a baby doll. Last year there were only three," he said.
In another contest that involved less "brainy" robots,
participating teams were required to command a combination of
intelligent machines in a basketball-like game.
In three minutes, the robots had to put balls of different
colors into canisters; whichever managed to lob the most balls
was declared winner and could go on to the next stage.
After a tight contest, Maximum_Balance, a robot designed by
students from the University of Indonesia (UI) challenged the
defending champion, ASKAF.i, designed by students from the
Surabaya Institute of Technology, in the final round.
It later transpired that ASKAF.i was too strong a contestant
for Maximum_Balance, although it took the UI students six months
to laboriously build the robot.
Ridho Alpha Kusuma, a Maximum_Balance mechanic, said that his
team spent Rp 10 million on building the robots. "We purchased
parts for the robot from Glodok," Ridho said, referring to the
largest electronics market in the capital.