La Vie Tranquille: Robocon Training : Lecture & Fabricating

20 Jun, KL - Bangun pagi seawal jam 630. Hari ni aku kene balik UTP untuk Robocon Training. Keluar dari rumah dengan Abang Fir yang waktu tu nak gi court. Aku dihantar ke stesen Putra, bergerak ke Pudu. Aku memang tak larat dengan kesesakan pagi tu. Masing-masing sibuk nak gi keje. Rasenye aku sorang je yang bawak beg baju dalam tren tu. Hu. Sungguh berasak-asak. Then aku sampai Pudu dalam kol 9 camtu. Amek tiket kol 1030pg. Aku cari port, duduk, and perhatikan orang sekeliling. Seronok.

Sampai UTP dalam kol 1lbey camtu. Waktu turun dari bas berkenalan dengan sorang budak ni. And beliau adela rumet aku sepanjang training program ni.

22 Jun, UTP - Malam tu para trainer dan trainee sume berkumpul buat pertama kalinya. We had briefing and ice breaking. Turut dibawa ko RoboLab. Aku agak excited malam tu sebab tu kali pertama aku masuk RoboLab; satu tempat yang aku selalu lalu waktu nak gi kelas, and wonder apa isinya. Aku agak kagum-dengan keselerakan RoboLab tu. Ah. barangkali mereka terlalu sibuk untuk menguruskan hal lain. Kami dibawa jalan-jalan dalam lab tu. Lengkap dengan peralatan dan mesin termasuk raw material eg. aluminium. Seronok.

23 - 27 Jun, UTP - Sepanjang 5 hari ni kitorang ade lecture yang disampaikan oleh senior-senior robocon. Er. Lupe nak cite. Organisasi ni terbahagi kepada 2 division : Technical dan Management. Technical Division terbahagi kepada 2 bahagian lain : Structure & Mechanism (S&M) dan Circuit & Programming (C&P). Memandangkan course yang aku ambil sekarang lebih kepada Mechanical, aku pilih S&M Division.

Satu perkara penting yang aku belajar adela AutoCAD. Damn seronok. Having your 2D drawing in 3D. So cool! Belajar AutoCAD buat aku rasa beruntung sangat-sangat join Robocon Team ni. Kami turut diberikan pendedahan lain such as how to build your robot base. How should you design your base. Which one is stable and which one is not. Here is where I can apply my Statics & Dynamics knowledge. I understand what I had learnt before more clearly. I can see better of WHY and HOW. Think that I should have joined the team long ago kan?. Haih.

One more thing. I had the chance to enter th Manufacturing Lab which most of my course mates hadn't! In this Manufacturing Lab, we made the couplers for our robot (coupler is used to join your wheel and motor side by side). As we have 2 wheels for our robot, we had to make 2 couplers. From a cylindrical-shaped steel, we finally managed to turn it into this shape :

Coupler in AutoCAD design. It took us 2 days to finish these 2 5cm couplers.

As the 5 days were over, we started to design our robot. We had a few designs but we finally determined on a design which we thought could bring us the highest possibility of winning. We are the GREEDY team. Why? Coz we're all boys IF I were a boy. Hoho. (Life in UTP is always like this. Being the only girl in the team no matter how big your team is) I'm the only girl in this 8-member team. I really hate this. However, I do sometimes like this situation as they will offer themselves to do this and that. But they didn't offer actually. They insisted.

I like it when we started to fabricate our robot. Doing all of these things-measuring, cutting, drilling etc. was fun. Believe me, I can do it all though my hands are weak. I was very proud when I had the workpiece being cut accurately and nicely using the meter saw-which makes a loud noise when you do the cuttings (the first-timers always get shocked of it-just like me). But one day is enough to make me used to it. I bravely successfully operate the machine-without the unwanted noise. Bravo Fado!

About 5 days working in the RoboLab with Rozi, Shakir and Faiz, we finally managed to have our robot standing before us. We were the first group to complete the fabricating process. Really proud of that. It's now the time for our group programmers to do the programming and the most important is, to have our robot move just like what we have planned before.

Now people, presenting... our first robot! Hehe