This was the scene at the recent national-level Robocon Competition 2008 (Robocon) at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) in Bangi, Selangor.

The theme for this year's contest is “Govinda – Touch the Sky”, based on myths surrounding the Dahl Handi Festival celebrated in North India, in line with the theme of the international competition to be held in India.

According to the myth, prince Krishna, who was fondly called Govinda, was a mischievous boy who tried to steal milk, butter and cheese from the pots carried by maidens.

In the competition, robots from participating teams were required to grab all three butter blocks to achieve “Govinda”. If they failed to do that, they could collect points by picking up cheese balls and placing them in baskets, all within three minutes.

Deputy Higher Education Minister Datuk Idris Haron who launched the competition said that such events were in line with the government's efforts to emphasise science and technology.

“This competition is to create awareness among students on the development and progress of science and technology.

Higher Education Management Department director-general Prof Datuk Dr Hassan Said hoped that the Malaysian team would take home the top prize at the international competition.

It was certainly a battle of wits and technology as the Robocon semi-finals saw favourite UTMA from University Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) beaten by MMU1 from Multimedia University (MMU) Malacca. In the other semis match, UPMB from Universiti Putra Malaysia was beaten by UTeM3 from Universiti Teknikal Malaysia, Malacca (UTeM). In the finals, the fight between MMU1 and UTeM3 boiled down to which of them had better strategies and speed.

MMU1 collected more butter blocks and cheese balls and was declared winner, beating 63 other teams from 31 institutions, while team Utem3 was first runner-up.

The winning team bagged a RM10,000 cheque, an Asian Broadcasting Union (ABU) special award worth US$1,000 (RM3,192) and the Best Engineering Award worth RM2,500.

Therefore, MMU will represent Malaysia in the ABU Asia Pacific Robot Contest 2008 in August in Pune, India.

However, UTM team will not regret to involve in this contest or year 2008, they believe that, next year they will put their all effort to make it possible to meet them again and win back their victory.

P/S: Hope you all can enjoy what i have write above, and after all, we all can share some comments based on this contest. As your all support will be our greatly appreciated. Thanks.