YOGYAKARTA- Alfarobi Team, the humanoid UGM robot team, successfully won the bronze medal at the International Robot Contest (IRC) 2012 in South Korea from 25-28 October 2012. UGM robot team was represented by Hadha Afrisal, Ridwan Wicaksono (Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, 2009), Widhi Yoga S. (Department of Mechanical Engineering, 2009), Bryan Novega, Sigit Diantoro (Department of Electronics and Instrumentation 2009) with supervisor Bakhtiar Alldino Ardi Sumbodo, S.Si.
"The participation of UGM robot team is to gain experience from robotics development in the world," Alldino said to reporters on Monday (5/11).
Alldino conveyed in the IRC 2012 competition UGM robot team brought 5 humanoid robots. The five robots are, Alfa, Faro, Robi, Joko Kelono and Aura. In the IRC 2012, the humanoid robots were required to perform multiple missions, such as object collection (placing object in the appropriate place), survival attack (duel to defend the territory), survival marathon (marathon race), autonomous penalty shoot-out (penalty kick), autonomous walking (walking around the track), dancing and several other missions.
"In the category of object collection, UGM humanoid robot team won a bronze medal," he added.
In the category of autonomous penalty shoot-out, 2 UGM humanoid robots were successfully ranked the third and the fourth. Morover, in the category of attack survival and marathon survival UGM robot team also made it into the semifinal.
According to Alldino, the strength of UGM robot team received good appreciation, particularly in terms of the limited funding and spare parts. Following the achievement, the team expects sustainability research in robotics, particularly the field of humanoid will continue to grow given the humanoid robot technology in Indonesia is relatively new which needs better resources.
"In addition, we are pioneering short-term robot research collaboration with Korea," Alldino said.
Similarly, team leader, Hadha Afrisal, added that the participation of Indonesia in the IRC 2012 is for the first time. In 2005, IRC was followed only by four countries, namely the U.S., Japan, Korea and China. The participation of other countries in the competition was opened in 2011.
"From Indonesia, UGM robot team was invited to join the competition," Hadha said.
Korean IRC 2012 is an annual event organized by the Ministry of Economy of Korea. The year 2012 is the seventh time and was followed by teams from 10 countries, including Korea, Japan, America, China, UK, Canada, Mexico, Malaysia, Myanmar and Indonesia. The UGM robot team was the only representative of Indonesia.