Talented robot makers fear unemployment

Talented robot makers fear unemployment

Zakki Hakim, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

How many youngsters do you know who are capable of building an
automatic robot that can find its own way towards a preset goal,
reach three baskets suspended from scaffolds and throw balls into
all three with unerring precision?

That's one automatic robot. Now, try making another two, plus
a manually operated one that can shoot balls into the baskets
from a distance after first picking them up from the floor. And
all that on a limited budget of only Rp 4 million (approximately
US$464).

Sounds hard?

Last week 32 teams of youngsters from all over the country
proved it can be done, with one team coming out of the contest as
the best of them all. They are living proof that Indonesian
youngsters, too, given the chance, are capable of making such
sophisticated machines and should be considered as among the
country's finest assets.

However, although building a robot may be nothing out of the
ordinary to them, getting a job is not as simple. At least that
is what Hasan Habibi said.

Habibi is a member of the winning team in the 2003 Indonesian
Robot Competition held in Jakarta last week. His team's robot was
named A.I.sya, or Mobile Artificial Intelligence -- and sya
meaning mobile in Japanese. Although he and his teammates, as
last week's contest winners, are entitled to represent Indonesia
in the Asia-Pacific Robot Competition in Bangkok this coming
August, he is not so sure about his future.

"Winning a robot competition does not mean it will be easy for
me to get a job after I graduate," the 20-year-old student said.
He said he took part in the competition with no real goal in
mind, but just to fill his spare time and for the mere fun of it.
He admitted, nevertheless, that his preference for spending his
time with high-tech tidbits was unusual. In Surabaya, where he
lives, however, such a hobby is popular and considered quite
prestigious.

That is no wonder, because the annual robot competition has
been held in the East Java provincial capital since it started
four years ago, and Habibi's alma mater, Polyteknik Sepuluh
November Institute of Technology (ITS) is the city's champion on
such matters. Teams from ITS have won competitions for four years
in a row, and in 2001 they also won an International Robot
Competition in Japan.

Habibi said that to become a winner and follow in his
predecessor's footsteps was not easy, because building a robot
requires hard work and, most of all, solid teamwork. He was
grateful that his team was solid and all his mates were devoted
to their work. So devoted, in fact, that one of the members had
to be hospitalized for four days because of dehydration.

Building A.I.sya on a limited budget was a unique challenge
that involved, among other things, finding affordable parts and
materials even before the robot could be designed, he said. Given
that particular obstacle, days before the competition started
they still had no viable fixed design, so they made a flexible
one.

That limitation, however, turned out to be an advantage
because they had found a design that allowed modification right
up to the minute before the match. As a result, A.I.sya became
the winner.

Habibi said that the competition would attract more
participants if the prize had been, for example, a job with a
good company.

"I believe that such a prize would lure more youngsters to
participate in the competition, especially those who are smarter
than I do," he said. There are many students smarter than he is,
he said, but they passed the opportunity to join the competition
because they were all concentrating on find a job immediately
after graduation.

Dadet Pramadihanto, coach of the winning team, told The
Jakarta Post that such a competition was very important because
it showed the public the real potential of Indonesia's human
resources.

"Industrialists can see, through this competition, that
Indonesian youngsters are capable of designing complicated robots
that prove to be even better than those designed by foreign
students," he said, referring to the championships of 2001, when
a team from the same Surabaya institute won the International
Robot Competition in Koriyama, Japan, organized by NHK TV
station. The winning robot in that competition was called "B-
Cak".

Dadet said that greater attention for such competitions was
needed from all parties involved, including the government,
industrialists and the public, in order to promote creativity
among Indonesian youngsters and to reach even better
accomplishments in the future.

"This competition definitely boosts the creativity of
students," he said. At the end of the day, such competitions
would raise the bargaining power of the students in applying for
jobs.

Kadek, a participant from Banjarmasin State Polytechnic, South
Kalimantan, agreed with Dadet saying that being a contestant
would increase his chances of finding a job. Furthermore, he
hoped that some industrialists could see the performance of his
team's "product" and that it would inspire them to ask the team
to make robots for their respective companies.

"We have proved ourselves to possess an ability to build
robots that are as good as those of our colleagues in Java," said
Kadek, whose team's robot, B-Kantan, won a prize for Best Design
last week.

Meanwhile, Arkhadi Pustaka, a member of the runner-up team
from Gadjah Mada University (UGM) in Yogyakarta, said that his
team's motivation was more to encourage his 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
and ultimately it make be a fine line in our curriculum vitae,"
he said.

At least that was what they can say for now as students.
However, one of the "B-Cak" designers, a humble young man named
Eko Henfri, who has just graduated from the D-4 diploma program
at ITS, told the Post that he was currently considering to apply
for a job.

Anyone interested in employing such a fine national asset? The
government, maybe?