Pekan school robotics team beats odds to win gold – New Straits Times

PEKAN: IN a move to spur creative and innovative thinking among their pupils, teachers at SK Seri Terentang here decided to spend their own money to buy robotics kit sets early last year.

The school then made their debut at the International Robotics Competition in Putrajaya in February last year and unexpectedly bagged the runners-up prize.

On Oct 20, it made the country proud after winning a gold medal at the The Maker Robot Festival, a robotics competition which attracted participants from around the world in Ulsan, South Korea.

SK Seri Terentang Robotics Club adviser Mazlan Muhamad Yusof said the experience was an amazing journey, especially as the school exposed the pupils to robotics and programming only last year.

When we first started, we collected money from the teachers to buy robotics kit sets. We never expected the school team to make it this far.

Due to this, he said, the school now had its own Robotics Club where its members assembled up to six sets of robots and conducted programming activities every week.

We hope the achievements will encourage more Year One and Year Two pupils to join the club.

We have a limited number of robotics kit sets as they are costly. This is compounded by the fact that there is no special fund for the club.

However, club members are eager to learn and they spend long hours working on the robots, he said, adding that the pupils parents had financially contributed to their childrens South Korea trip.

Mazlan, who led the team of five pupils, along with two other teachers Roslaini Abdullah and Roszita Ajmain, said the decision to travel to South Korea was to give the participants exposure on robotics and Korean culture.

A Malaysian teacher who is in South Korea for a teacher exchange programme had told us about the festival. We decided to travel there hoping that the pupils could gain knowledge on robotics and learn a new culture.

Surprisingly, we emerged tops and won gold in the sumo-bot category, which is where two robots attempt to push each other out of a circle, he said.

The five pupils who travelled to the festival were Muhammad Imran Mazlan, 10, Muhammad Baqir Borhan, 12, Muhammad Danish Fawwaz Mohamad, 11, Nurul Iman Mazlan, 11, and Nur Ishamina Amni Mohd Imeran, 10.

On their next competition, Mazlan said the team would travel to Guangzhou, China, next month to compete in the 2019 MakeX Starter City Guardian competition. He said the schools team was picked to represent Malaysia after winning gold at the MakeX Malaysia Robotics Competition, which was held in Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia in Bangi on Oct 12 and 13.

The participants have started their training and are making preparations for the competition. Training sessions include modifying robots and programming them to carry out instructions according to the requirements of the competition, he said, adding that some 60 countries would compete in the competition from Nov 28 to Dec 1.

SK Seri Terentang along with SK Putrajaya Presint 11(3) in Putrajaya recently won five medals including a gold medal in the South Korean robot festival.

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Pekan school robotics team beats odds to win gold - New Straits Times