Every year, crowds of enthusiastic students from tech and non-tech institutions get all worked up about Vietnam’s robotic games.

Members of the BK ITP team from the Hanoi University of Technology test their robots ahead of the Vietnam Robocon 2009 regional qualifiers to be held next Wednesday

Everything is looking good as Hanoi’s university and college teams prepare to do battle in the regional qualifying rounds.

Nguyen Van Tuan, leader of the BK STC team from the Hanoi University of Technology, says they have been preparing for the contest since November.

They keep their online forum and bulletin up to date with test results and pending tests, assignments for team members and more, so that they can arrange their schedules accordingly, says Tuan.

Even places like flea markets are listed so that everyone knows where to shop for parts without spending too much.

In the workshop of the BK ITP team from the same university, chief programmer Ho Minh Ngoc is carefully threading wires as he assembles an electronic circuit.

“Tidy assembly makes the robots look better and lets them move freely,” says Ngoc. “Controlling the robots in the quickest and most precise way, plus a bit of luck, will give us victory.”

In Robocon’s seven national finals to date, teams from the Hanoi University of Technology have won the event twice, been runners-up two times, and come third on six occasions.

So great is the interest at Ngoc’s school, and such is its prominence in the annals of Robocon, that it held the school’s contest where 21 teams were winnowed to 15.

Another hot spot is the Hanoi University of Industry, where 18 teams fought it out for a place in this year’s qualifying rounds.

Last year, its FEE 02 team claimed the crown in the seventh Vietnam Robocon, which started out with more than 300 teams from 53 colleges and universities.

The 2009 version

With the subtitle “Travel Together to the Drum of Victory,” this year’s competition takes the form of an imaginary journey with a Japanese kago, a type of single sedan chair suspended from a beam and carried by two men.

According to the rules, each team must field three and only three robots - one to sit in the kago and two to carry it.

When the robots reach their destination, the seated traveler alights from the kago and beats three Japanese drums. The quickest team is the winner, as long as it’s done within three minutes.

Along the way there are various obstacles like a mountain pass and a place to test the robots’ ability to maneuver.

If the seated robot falls out of the kago, or the kago itself overturns, that team is out of the competition.

This structure will be repeated in every round from the preliminaries to the national final.

The annual event’s organizer is the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union (ABU), which says it chose the travel and drum theme to highlight cooperation between humans and robots.

These days, robots play an important role in caring for the elderly and the disabled, and rescue work in times of emergency, so they must appear to show kindness and goodwill toward humans, the ABU explains.

After the regional qualifiers in Hanoi, Da Nang and HCMC from April 1-10, the winners will compete in the national final in Hue city from May 11-17.

From there, the national champion will go on to represent Vietnam in the ABU Asia-Pacific Robot Contest 2009 in Tokyo in August.

The Asia-wide competition began life in the Japanese capital in 2002 and has since gained the involvement of 25 countries.

Its stated purpose is to strengthen friendship among young people and foster engineering and technological advancement among the contestants.

Vietnam has done more than just taken part in all five out of seven Asian finals, it has won three of them - in 2002, 2004 and 2006.

In 2007, Vietnam hosted the Asian final in Ha Long Bay, where the championship went to a Chinese team. China repeated its victory last year.

VietNamNet/TN