By Jeremy Koh
Nanyang Polytechnic dominated this year's Singapore Robotics Games, winning half of the 42 medals on offer.
This was the polytechnic's best showing at the competition, dubbed the Robot Olympics of Singapore, since it started in 1997.
So what's the formula to NYP's success?
Underwater robot, sumo robot and wall climbing robot.
These are among the 14 categories which tertiary students competed in.
Over 1,400 participants took part this year, and NYP student Chuck-E Han was one of them.
Despite taking part for the first time, the final-year manufacturing engineering student won Gold in the sumo robot category.
"Ever since young, I was very interested in robotics, transformers and all that, and I got to build my own robot, as a team of course, but I got to build up one from scratch, so that was the fun part. For sumo basically we have this 154 cm in diameter ring, and we have two robots in the ring and the first one to touch the ground loses."
Chuck-E worked with two other team-mates in the sumo robot category, and they based their robot design on a bulldozer.
"My team and i actually brainstormed a lot of ideas, a lot of designs, and then we deliberated and discussed and we decided on this strategy to play with. It took us a month, three weeks to four weeks. My idea was to scoop up the opponent and push them off the ring so i sourced through the internet, from tv and couple of advices from my lecturers as well. The robot has a curved blade as a body and we have rubber tires at the side like a tank."
Chuck-E found the experience both fun and tiring.
"I had to clock in 33 hours worth of OT just to finish this, because i was involved in another competition for the Singapore Robotics Games, so i didn't have much time, so i had to OT and then my dinner was postponed, eating habits and all that, had to get used to it, but it was fun."
Fun was also what Win Sanda Moe from NYP was looking forward to when she took part in the competition.
The final year engineering and manufacturing student from Myanmar won Gold in the legged robot marathon category.
The robots were made to race around a track, and the fastest robot wins.
"This legged marathon robot there's programming involved. Most importantly, you have to know how to adjust those sensors. And upon that, you determine different methods to use."
This is the second time that Sanda is taking part in the competition.
"I want to get champion for NYP because i put so much effort on it. At least i want to win one medal for the school."
Despite her experience, Sanda encountered some difficulties.
"We only had a few weeks to prepare for the competition because different people are doing the assembly and handling the robot so we have to adjust back all the alignments. For example the sensors, every time we adjust the sensors based on one programming, but it doesn't work on the track, then we have to keep doing the adjustments and get frustrations and all that."
Still, Sanda said she had fun in the competition.
"It's good actually, it's fun because we stay back together, eat out together and all that, it's actually really really fun."
For this year's competition, NYP had sent in about four to five teams for each category.
And its success at the competition this year is exceptional on two fronts.
Besides winning 21 of the 42 medals, it also scored 9 Golds, a bumper harvest.
Mr Lam Yook Ming is the Deputy Director of NYP's Manufacturing division at the School of Engineering.
"This year we did extremely well because we went back to look at the engineering and we had some breakthroughs. So what we did was we went back and look at the actual requirements and what are the critical success factors. And then from there, we look at the available technologies and we adopt them and we try it out. So we have groups of students trying each strategy and finally we test it out and whichever that makes it, we adopt those."
Mr Lam also said that he's not surprised by NYP's good showing at the competition.
"We know that this year will be much better. I'm conducting all the reviews and from the reviews itself, i already know that this year we'll do very well, so it's within our expectations."
He also said that the competition would help reinforce what students learnt in class.
"Foremost i would say that students are fascinated by robots that they encounter in movies and then from there on, if you can marry work and play together, i think the students learn more."
But more than just gaining knowledge, Chuck-E said the competition also taught him teamwork.
"We had our disagreements of course, but we worked through them with our lecturer's help. He advised us on what to, if this is the better one, that sort of thing. So this is what i learnt, to give and take and to compromise sometimes. But if we really feel that our idea is really the better one, then we'll have to pitch the idea to the team, and work together as a team and decide as a team."
As for Sanda...
"As you know i'm from Burma and some of the Chinese students don't speak English and i'll be using some of the Chinese words i know plus my body language and all that. I get to know different cultures of different countries and also i learnt some Chinese words. Know more people, make more friends, it's good."
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