YOGYAKARTA – The Universitas Gadjah Mada robot team has, once again, made an outstanding achievement internationally. Team members: Malik Khidir (Faculty of Natural Sciences and Maths), Agus B. Budiyanto (Faculty of Engineering), Bachtiar C. Permana (Vocational School) became winners in two robot competitions in the U.S. They became first winner in Trinity Fire Fighting Robot Contest, 6-7 April, in Hartford City, Connecticut. They also won two gold medals for Fire Fighting Robot and Natcar Robot and 1 silver for Balancer Robot in RoboGames 2013 Olympics of Robots, 19-21 April, in San Mateo, California.
Chair of Delegates as well as Dean of Faculty of Natural Sciences and Maths, Drs. Pekik Nurwantoro, M.S., Ph.D., commented positively on the achievement. At Trinity, the UGM team beat other teams from 9 countries, including from China, the U.S., and Eastern Europe. Pekik said that some other participants admired the Indonesian robots. “The UGM team made a spider-like robot, which is quite unique,” he said on Tuesday (23/4).
The team brought 6 robots to be contested in the U.S. Separately, Student Affairs Director, Dr. Senawi, said the achievement was the fruit of hard work, discipline and solid cooperation before the competition. “We had involved psychology students to encourage the solid relations among team members,” he said.
Robotics development at UGM, according to Senawi, was carried out through robotics team establishment between study programmes. The team then submit a proposal to faculties and university for funding.