Published on June 27, 2005

A group of students from the South have won this year’s national ABU Robot Contest and earned the right to represent Thailand at the Asia-Pacific Robot Contest in Beijing in August.

“Origin 3” from Nakhon Sri Thammarat Industrial and Community Education College narrowly beat “Luk Chao Mae Klong Prapa” from Dhurakij Pundit University in the final yesterday.

The southern students won the robot match by two games to three with scores of 29-3 and 33-3 at the Impact Arena, Muang Thong Thani.

The object of the game was for teams to make their robots score more goals than the opposing robots by shooting balls into baskets on the court. The robots were supposed to shoot balls into the main basket at the centre of the court, four trays at the corners of the court and two “outer baskets” at diagonal ends of the court.

Origin3 won Bt150,000 for its troubles and Luk Chao Mae Klong Prapa won Bt50,000 for being runners-up.

“We practised a lot for two months and we fixed our mistakes,” said Piyawat Petchnoi, a member of Origin 3.

Origin 3 also won the Best Tech Award.

“We had our eye on Origin 3. They made a beautiful piece that worked well this year,” said Tanurat Krirerk from Dhurakij Pundit.

Origin 3 reached the final by winning the vocational schools section last week and Luk Chao Mae Klong Prapa won the university section. Both teams were unbeaten so far this year.

There was no animosity between the teams and opponents hugged each other after games. The fans were in good form too, with over 5,000 people turning up to watch the contests. They clapped and cheered opposing teams when their own teams were beaten.

Sixteen teams from around the country competed in the second and final round of ABU Robot Contest, and the winner will represent Thailand at the Robocon, the ABU Asia-Pacific Robot Contest in Beijing.

This year’s contest will be on August 27, with the theme “Climb on the Great Wall, Light the Holy Fire.”

Robocon is an annual robot contest held by the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union for university, college and polytechnic students in the Asia-Pacific region.

Under a common set of rules, participants compete with their peers from other countries to create a robot using their creative and technical abilities in an open competition.

Kornchanok Raksaseri

The Nation

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