SRG 2008

SRG stands for Singapore Robotics Games and this is held every year in around January. This year, it was from 8th to 10th in last month. I went to there but no as a competing team, but as an observer with my friends. Last year, SRG was held in our School, Republic Polytechnic. This year was in Singapore Science Center. This is the event participated by a lot of school and institutes from Singapore, also it is open to all and international participation is encouraged.
It was 3 days event, from 8th to 10th January. I went only two days because I don't want to cancel my class for 3 days. My first day is when there is underwater robotic competition (URC) was. Science center is not too far away from Jurong East MRT station. I also had extra time and we just decided to take a walk to there.
It was still early when we reached there :D so just looking around robots curiously :) like a kid saw a nice toy :D. This is my second experience of actually went to watched. Last year, I had watch once in my school. However, in first time, I am still not quite robotic person yet :D. Now I got a lot interests in robotics and there is so many things to curious when I see robots.
Different and different robots are there. Small to nearly human shape, underwater, sumo, dancing, soccer, intelligent robot, leggers (like insect robot with amazing movement speed), rock climbing robot, robot colonies and other many many types of robots. There are different categories in competition for different level. Some competition are only for secondary. I have a great interests in underwater robot since I am gonna do it from my FYP.
So here the competition started :D. Actually that is the second day of competition. The first event of the day was robot colonies :D. There is a quite large board with covers beside. In which we can see many groups of two different color stones and two robots will pick up those and deliver to respective places. This is quite interesting, since it is called robot colonies, once one of each doesn't work, it is sure to lose half points. It is not possible to pick up and deliver all with only one of them in given time. After we watched a couple of participating robots, I heard a lot of noise from the BACK!
Look at it, there is a huge of audience gathering at sumo robot. It was autonomous sumo competition on that day. I will tell you that was the most exciting competition of all. Like watching a real sumo match. Winning and Losing is based on how well they are programmed, power of motor, battery, sensor and of course the structure of the robot. They use different tricks to avoid the attack and fight back as they are programmed. Some robots seems to have intelligence. They suddenly moved to the back side of the opponents and push with a sudden force to go off from competition platform. :D
Now it is time to go back to our main target competition. Now one robot has already made it's way in competition tank which is filled with water to nearly full. There are about 27 competing teams in underwater robot category. Not all the robot are qualify because of cloning and also not all the robot are fully function during the competition. However, it was very great when we can see good robots running, picking cargo and deliver it. I saw different technology use by different institutes. Most of them use simple propellers but some use buoyancy control system. Robots with buoyancy control system have extreme stability. The water tank is L shaped and there are 16 cargo nuts in the middle of L shaped. The task is to pick up and deliver to both side in pairs. Robots can't deliver the cargo to only one side. :D. Finally, our school was able to take gold and bronze medals in underwater robot category.
There are others different competitions on next day. So I went there again on next day, too. On that day, there was intelligent robot competition, leggers, dancing robot show, soccer and sumo and other a fews. For an intelligent robot, the task is to pick up different color balls and deliver all of them to different place with respective colors. Leggers are like insects, they have 6 legs mostly and they can run really fast on a track which has a little bit of high and low steps. Amazing :). You will know and feel how much technology is wonderful only when you go that kind of event. There were other interesting competitions on that day. After we watching several participating robots, simply we went back home with a lot of images and videos we had taken from that competition :D. However, I have to say sorry since images and videos are in my friend's computer, I will try to post them later. :D Then, you will see how the robots are different for doing different tasks.

This is the website for SRG if you want to know more about that ... >>> Here <<<

My Opinion: It was a great competition for everyone. By holding that kind of event, students will become more familiar to robotics. Rather than doing projects, by having competition, robotic teams from different schools build their robot with the hope to win the competition. So there is more productive and effective effort and result in doing robotics. School are more competitive in building robots and there is more possibility for evolving better robots per years. By introducing this technology events to public is very good way of giving knowledge of robotics. Next year, hopefully, we will able to see more category of robot and better functioning robots in previous categories. It is good to go and have a look at that event and you will get more knowledge on what is robotics in the world today :D

Thanks for reading ...


*** Pictures >>> Here