All about ABU Robocon - How to get started?

Competitions are fun ways for kids and adults alike to learn and make friends very quickly. Robotics competitions aren’t different. Robot competitions bring together people in different age groups – researchers, students, and enthusiasts working in unique and perhaps more challenging areas in robotics, opening up rare and tremendous opportunities to meet and learn from each other. 

In this article, we are going to discuss ABU Robocon that includes how to get started and some tips and tricks to win the competition.

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ABU Robocon Competition

The ABU Asia-Pacific Robot Contest (ABU Robocon) is an Asian Oceanian College robot competition, founded in 2002 by Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union. In the competition, robots compete to complete a task within a set period of time. The contest aims to create friendship among young people with similar interests who will lead their countries in the 21st century, as well as help advance engineering and broadcasting technologies in the region. The event is broadcast in many countries through ABU member broadcasters.

How to prepare for the competition?

The process of preparing for ABU robotics competition is pretty impressive and I’d like to dwell on it a bit further.

Get yourself involved in Camps, Clubs and Other events

While there is an overall environment of friendliness, this is a competitive and intense field. Competing in some of the great robotics competitions around can lead to trophies, scholarship money, and notoriety.

Rather than jumping right into the competitive side of robotics right away, some people learn the lay of the land by joining robotics clubs as non competing members, viewing competitions as spectators, or attending a computer tech camp to get prepared. These are great places to learn and build skills before you enter the arena.

One thing that established teams can do is mentor up and coming or younger robotics enthusiasts. This can be an effective way to maintain the competitive advantage a team has developed while still helping others make their own mark in robotics competitions.

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Check out your competition

Good robotics teams always have an idea of what their competitors are up to. Some of this information comes by way of doing the research before the big day. In fact, many competition organizers publish a list of teams, team members, and past accomplishments. There is also a lot that can be learned simply by watching other teams compete or their demo videos on YouTube.

Don’t worry. It’s not creepy. Other teams will be checking out your team as well. Remember that the overall atmosphere of the robotics competition is friendly. You are more likely to find people who are eager to share notes than those who eye people with suspicion.

Get your team looking like a team

This may seem silly, but it really is important. The best robotics teams are truly cohesive units, and that is how they present themselves to others. Work together to select a team name, uniform, and team colours.

In a strange way, robotics can be a bit like professional wrestling. Teams, even robots develop personas. This is all in fun, but it does a lot to keep the crowd excited and to get teams appropriately worked up and ready for competition.

Be prepared to react to new challenges

There is no such thing as a perfectly competition-ready robot. Every robotics team needs to be prepared to make field repairs and tweaks to ensure that they get the best performance possible out of their robots.

In addition to this, teams should always count on event organizers to throw them a curveball. These are last-minute challenges that are designed to force teams to work on the fly. If you have trained your robot to do just one thing properly, it may not win in the long shot.

Define roles and backup positions

Just like players on a sports team each play a role, robotics team players have roles to play as well, and each is just as important as the next. Typical roles include:

Marketers - Team members who get the crowd enthused and create an overall team spirit.

Drivers - These are the folks who operate the robots.

The Crew - These are the team members who show up with tools in hand, ready to keep each robot operational.

Recon - These team members check out the competition and report back on any new developments.

The Organizer - This is the team member who knows everything the team must do to meet the challenges of the competition. They ensure that everyone is where they need to be at any given time.

The Spokesperson - This is the person who speaks for the group when they are approached by spectators who are curious about robotics competitions.

These are some of the ways to prepare for not only ABU Robocon this also applies to other robotics competition as well. If you’ve ever thought about participating, find a team and go for it. If you are simply curious about robotics, by all means, go and check out a competition near you.

All about ABU Robocon - How to get started?