Who would expect that a soup ladle can make a team the national champion? It may seem unreasonable, but that what has happened to Ironfire, a robot that won the Indonesian Smart Wheeled Robot Contest (KRCI) 2010. The contest was held in Malang, East Java, from 19-20 June.
Unlike the robot contestants from other universities, in the last race, Ironfire used a large soup ladle or irus/centhong in Javanese language. The ladle is mounted on the front as a wheel replacement that serves to sustain the existing load on the front as well as a free wheel. "One of our secrets was that yesterday we used the ladle as a wheel front replacement," said Farid Inawan, Ironfire team leader at UGM on Tuesday (22/06/2010).
Farid explained that the ladle installation made Ironfire different from the other robots which still use four wheels, two in front and two at the rearside. Actually, just before the Ironfire was contested yesterday, for once they had wanted to replace the large ladle with two regular wheels, but they were forbidden by the committee because the concept of the competing robots had to be the same as before. "Actually, we wanted to replace the ladle with normal wheels, but the committee prohibited us to change the design and concept. Still, we won the contest," he said.
With a ladle substituting the front wheels, it turned out that Ironfire was able to compete faster and smarter, as well as in avoiding various obstacles, such as road bumps and the ring of fire. Previously in May this year during the robot contest on the campus of UNY, Ironfire had used tablespoons, but as tablespoons were less stable and got stuck to the obstacles, it was decided then to replace them with a ladle.
Meanwhile, another team member, Noer Aziz Ismail, added that in the Indonesian Robot Contest in Malang, they had gone pessimistic seeing the preparations made by the other teams, especially when they were prohibited to use regular wheels. "We had been pessimistic before, but then we were able to win this," he said.
According to Noer Aziz, Ironfire actually took the concept of Iron Man, the robot in the movie. Weighing about 2 kg and was painted pink and blue, Ironfire has high speed and is capable of avoiding various obstacles. Ironfire with acrylic main element is installed with several sensors, such as fire/heat, distance, and color/line sensors. "Alhamdulillah, the team’s hard work that night that continued to make the preparation and adjustment before the match yesterday had not not gone in vain," he added.
Following the victory at the Malang Muhammadiyah University, Ironfire will compete in the Trinity College Fire Fighting Robot Contest in Hartford, United States, in April 2011. At about the same time, they also plan to participate in Robogames 2010 in San Mateo County Event Center, San Francisco. For preparations, the Ironfire team has also designed the new version of Ironfire with four wheels to make it more stable, but it has a longer dimension. “We have made the new version of Ironfire, but with a longer dimension," said Noer.
As reported previously, the Ironfire team of UGM consisting of of Farid Inawan (Electrical Engineering Department, class of 2009), Noer Aziz Ismail (Department of Electrical Engineering, class of 2009), Wahyu Wijayanto (Department of Mechanical Engineering, class of 2008), and Luis Rizki Ramelan (Electrical Engineering Department, class of 2009), succeeded in becoming the first champion in the National KRI contest at the Muhammadiyah University in Malang, 19-20 June. In that competition, Ironfire managed to gather the smallest value than its opponents. Ironfire managed to obtain a 3.70 seconds of value, while the Electronical Polytechnic Institute Surabaya (PENS) and Siliwangi Polban of Bandung State Polytechnic were the second and third winners.