UGM robot team successfully won the gold and silver medals in the international robotics competition The 13th International Robot Olympiad 2011, held at the University of Tarumanegara, 15-17 December. The Olympics was followed by about 100 teams from 13 countries worldwide, including South Korea, Philippines, Singapore, Japan, China, Canada, Indonesia, Malaysia, the United States and New Zealand.
In this competition, UGM sends two teams to compete in the category of Creative Robots and Indonesiana Robot. The teams are Boyo Instrument that successfully won gold medal thanks to their flying robot and Gamaro team that brought home the silver medal with the dance robot. Boyo Instrument team managed to win the category of Creative Robot. The team is composed of Andika Pramanta Yudha (Department of Information Technology) and eight students from Department of Electronics and Instrumentation (Elins) Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics. They are Rossena Karisma Rasul, Christian Antonia L.P., Rangga Kurniawan, M. Zaim Abdillah, Eviyan Fajar Anggara, Firdhaus Azhar, Anggoro Wibisono, and Latifah Noor.
Boyo Instrument Team Leader, Christian Antonia L.P., said in the robot competition they made two robots, namely a Quadcopter named The Pitung and an Explorer Bot named Paijo. Quadcopter is a flying robot that can carry a robot car that can fly to a disaster location and monitor the condition from above. At the disaster point, the quadcopter will send robotic car that infiltrates into the ruins and detect the presence of victim. Then, the robot will send environmental data of temperature, concentration of toxic gases, etc. to a central controller far away from disaster area so that rescue teams can find out the location of the victim and the surrounding environmental conditions.
Due to budget constraints, in the making of the robot the team had to utilize used materials. "We use aluminum of clothesline to make the plane’s frame. Similarly, for quadcopter’s frame, we utilize boarding house iron bar from friends and some other bought from the Klitikan Market," explains Christian to reporter, Thursday (5/1), in UGM Stana Parahita.
Christian said the Quadcopter has cruising range as far as 1 kilometer with a fly period of 15 minutes, depending on battery power. Similarly, the robot car has a cruising range of 1 kilometer with the sensor ability as far as 6 meters. According to the jury, the Team’s work was the best because of some advantages, including cheap production cost because they utilized used goods. “Another advantage is because no other country has innovations like we did, which is flying robot combined with ground robot," he explained.
The flying robot created by nine young students consists of four propellers, which has a frame to put the robot car at the bottom. They set up a number of sensors stabilizers, such as gyro sensors to detect angular acceleration, accelerometer sensor to control the angle, and GPS to transmit position coordinates of the Quadcopter location.
Meanwhile, explorer bot or robot car is equipped with cameras to observe the conditions at the disaster site. This robot is also embedded with infrared sensors to detect the presence of the victims who are still alive. In addition, temperature sensors are also embedded. "In total, to make this robot it cost 8.8 million rupiah," added Andika.
Andika mentions the background for the robot development because Jogja is a disaster-prone area. In the future the robot will be developed by additional sensors, such as gas sensors or volcanic sensor. "It will be customized to the type of the disasters. In addition to finding disaster victims, in the future the robot is expected to carry out the dropping of drugs to a difficult site," he said.
In the meantime the Gamaro team won silver medal in the category of Indonesiana robots. They make a humanoid robot named Joko Klono, which can dance traditional dances from Jogja, namely Klono Mask Dance. Gamaro team leader, Pramudita Johan Iswara, mentions besides highlighting the dance aspect, the robot has attractive design and had already won the best design in Indonesia Art Robot Contest 2011. This robot also has 31 joints, which is 6 in each leg, 7 in each hand, 3 in the neck and 2 in the body. "With 31 joints, it can do elegant and graceful dance. This is also an added value according to the jury," he explained.
Pramudita conveys the Joko Klono robot is made using premium quality components. Robot’s joints are made with high-powered Cervo motors with a lift power of 30 pounds each 1 centimeter. "The total production cost amounted to 40 million rupiah," the student of Elins Department said.
The Gamaro team consists of Pramudita, Afriyani Soraya Sari, Nisa ‘Latifatul Ngilma and Mirza Dhanu from Elins Programs. Next, three students of Mechanical Engineering Department, Zulfikar Rachman, Rahmanditya Wijaya, and Gilang Abimantaka, as well as two students of Diploma program in Electrical Engineering, Eska Muhammad Arifin and Agus Faudin.