Managed to attend the Kuching National Robotics Competition 2009 today. After filing in all the appropriate documents for my brief trip, and dealing with the administrators, I was off to the Kuching Civic Centre to see what was in store for my team shall they make it to the regional competition. This is kind of a reconnaissance mission for my team, which will be going to SMK Asajaya this Thursday for the same competition under the Samarahan Zone.
I was expecting huge gigantic robots, and not mentioning complicated designs because Kuching is known for having good exposure of the Education Minitrys’ Robotics programme, and after 5 years.. .Kuching division has always sent the most representatives, and always performed above expectations. My main focus was none other the ‘Open Category’ because my team will be competing in this same category. Wasn’t interested with the ‘Regular Category’ which has a lot to do with lady luck, than proper preparation.
However, I was dissapointed.
Maybe the theme for this year which is ‘Artist Robot‘ is too difficult. There was only 3 secondary schools participating, and all shared the same idea… they created a robot which could draw. All three schools a.k.a. SM Teknik Sejingkat, SMB St Joseph and SMK Batu Lintang. I was less than impressed because last year, there was so many huge and complicated robots and designs on display. This year… LAME is just the perfect word to describe it.
As a matter of fact, I noticed better ideas coming from the primary school participants. Yeah, maybe their robots were simple, but it was interesting to see how much effort they put into each project they had. Even better, they decorated their booths nicely to reflect their robots’ identity. Shame on the secondary school teams.
I didn’t stay long to see the presentation because I had to return to work by 1pm. Nonetheless, my personal point of view was that my team does have a better (or at least more interesting) project if compared to those available today.I can’t reveal their project yet, but I will do so once we come back from Asajaya.
That evening, I shared my experience with the team as the team did major tweaks to their presentation and also to their respective projects. Tomorrow will be the last day for preparation, and I anticipate a long day as the ‘Malaysian side‘ of my team kicks into gear.. You know, last minute preparations…
Just hope for the best this coming Thursday…. Jai ho.. Hai ho…