I’m back home… earlier that what was expected. After the long battle and negotiation, we have finally withdrawn from this year competition due to some so called “dispute”.

Our journey started 8 months ago, when the theme of “Travel Together for the Victory Drums” was announced during last year international final held at Pune, India. As we’re defeated during last year domestic game, we planned to start things earlier to get everyone prepared for this year’s competition.

It has been very tiring throughout that period of time. A lot of problems occurred in our attempts to develop new technologies for this year competition. Nonetheless, due to the perseverance and determination of the members, some of our researches work. For instance, the so called “not following the line” technique. For many, it might seem like just simply using the encoder to estimate the distance, but to us, there are more to it. All members were overjoyed when the development of this technique produced high accuracy. At that moment, we knew we can complete the tasks with shorter time and perform better.

On the first day of the test run, we’re caught “red-handed” by some students from other institution for arriving early in the morning and tested the game field. It was not stated in any black and white and regulations that teams are not allowed testing the game field prior to the competition. The worse case, these students uploaded the video on youtube in attempt to threaten us to withdraw.

Those few days had been very tensed as all the members were worried about the teams’ fate in this year’s game.

We realized the hot discussion in youtube and chinese cari forum but we decided not to place any comment at all.

Each and every of our game was being boo by the crowd. The barbaric screams filled the stadium. The so called “sportsmanship” was unseen within any of them, but we decided not to fight back no matter how harsh they can be.

After the long negotiation with the panel judges, they finally decided to deduct 40 points from each of our teams (which is equivalent to being disqualified in one of the round competitions). This amount of points can easily crush any team in this year’s game and it really hurt to know that it was our only choice. Nonetheless, we thought we’re saved.

The overall performance of the participating teams this year was devastating. Some of the teams won by getting negative marks and violations, some of the teams won by zero marks, some of the teams won without even completing the first task. The result was very clear. We do not blame any of them as on our journey to create robots to complete the tasks, we knew and understand the difficulty of this year’s game was very different from the previous years. So we thought, for those teams who are growing and advancing, no matter how they win, this can be a very good experience for them to improve themselves, to share knowledge with other teams who can perform better and have positive idea towards the competition.

Unfortunately, most of them do not share our vision.

All they want was to use any tactic to bring down the “strong” teams. To them, perhaps by disqualifying us, they might stand a better chance to represent Malaysia in the international game? They were totally unsatisfied with the judges’ decision in penalizing only 40 points from each of our teams. So a few institutions signed a “treaty” to the judges, saying and “threaten” that it was unfair to test the game field in the morning; that if we continue participating, they will boycott next year’s competition and so on.

The true meaning of the game disappeared.

It was a predicament for the organizing committee. The pressure from these “institutions” was very negative for the judges and for us.

Finally, on Saturday, one day before the final, we decided to withdraw from the competition. We’re so close to the final. It was the worst choice for us as we know we stand a chance to fight till the end, to meet with the “strong” teams face on and to exchange our knowledge. However, it was the best choice to save the organizing committee from this predicament and to avoid this issue being brought international, causing disgrace to our country.

All members were disappointed but there was no way to solve the issue without us withdrawing. I can see the sadness and pain in every of them. 8 months of hard works were in vain. We sacrificed our academic result, our nights of sleep, our holiday when other could went for vacation, our time… all but to get ourselves withdrawn just because of a video uploaded on youtube…

To all Roboconian around Malaysia, I hope you keep an open-mind if you are reading this. This post is not intended to offend anyone, but to let everyone knows exactly what happened behind the scene. We have got our punishment and what we deserved. There’s nobody who is absolutely wrong and none absolutely right either. So please do not spam this post with those harsh comments anymore.

To the champion team, we wish you the very best on your journey to Tokyo, Japan. You have the true quality and we know you can do it!

Nonetheless, we’re pleased to know that there are still a number of our supporters out there. We truly thank you for your support all these years that keep us going and we’re sorry to turn you guys down this year. Our future is still undecided… not to mention next year’s game. No matter how’s the outcome, we really appreciate your support.

I guess this is life… nothing is fair.

Share