ABU Asia-Pacific Robot Contest (Robocon) was founded by the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union (ABU) in 2002 as an Asian-Oceanian college robot competition to promote friendship among young people with similar interests while advancing engineering and broadcasting technologies. Every year the host designs a series of tasks, relating to the host country’s culture, to be completed by the robots designed and created by the participating teams within a short period of time, typically 3 minutes. Each game normally starts with tasks to be completed by each team individually before the team attempts a competitive task designed such that only one of the two competing teams may complete it.

Malaysia Ministry of Higher Education (MoHE) and Radio Televisyen Malaysia (RTM) have been co-hosting Robocon Malaysia regularly among Malaysian Colleges and Universities to determine the Malaysian representative to participate in ABU Robocon. Since 2020, Sunway University has been sending our team to participate in Robocon Malaysia.

As the frequency of Robocon Malaysia has been shifted to biannually this year, a friendly match was held on 22 June 2024 in UTM by the UTM teams to serve as the platform to promote knowledge sharing among Robocon teams across Malaysia.  

During the friendly match, Sunway University was one of the institutes in which the Robocon team had constructed the two robots for competitions. The other institutes include UTM, USM, and UTAR. The friendly match ended with a technical sharing among teams from six institutes inclusive of UTM, USM, Sunway University, UTAR, Monash University, and MMU.

Throughout the friendly match, teams across different institutes shared the challenges they faced and lessons they learnt whether in terms of technical or management issues. On top of that, friendships were fostered among teams across different institutes for continuous sharing and learning from each other.

Robocon is a competition that promotes and encourages continual development, not just for a one-off competition, but to build and grow the students in their understanding and applications in robotics over years and generations. By being a member of the Sunway Robocon Team, our students can engage in learning experiences different from in-class learning. The Department of Engineering encourages the students to participate in competitions as they provide the platform for voluntary learning to solve relatively more open problems, in addition to the in-class learning whereby the scopes are well-defined.

The Sunway Robocon Team, consisting of students from different disciplines, creates a dynamic learning experience for the students to learn from each other. The team recruits students during the September semester every year to allow sufficient time for existing members to train the new members, and to plan, design, and develop the robots for the competition coming up in the following year, normally around May to June. It is vital for the more experienced students to guide and train the younger students to ensure the knowledge learnt and the solutions found are being passed on.

For students who may be interested in robotics but lack the confidence to participate in the competitions, the Sunway Robocon Team members have started the Sunway Robotics Club (SRC) since 2023 to provide learning and training through interest groups, workshops, talks, or other activities.

The robots designed and developed by the Sunway Robocon Team will be showcased during Sunway Open Days. Come to the School of Engineering and Technology (SET) students' projects showcase booth to see the robots and to learn more about the team from our members there! 

Dr Richard Wong Teck Ken
School of Engineering and Technology
Email: [email protected]