Malaysian students win top prize at Universal Robotics Challenge 2022

Tech Up Sdn. Bhd., the National Host of Universal Robotics Challenge (URC) 2022, has announced the results of the virtual competition where Malaysian school pupils emerged as first-place winners in all four categories at the international level.

In Idea Contest (Junior Category), the first-place winner was Sekolah Kebangsaan Sungai Udang (Ahmad Aiman Danish bin Ahmad Syahir, Muhammad Harith Zaeem bin Hizamuddin, Adam Hariz bin Abdul Halim) and the first-place winner of Idea Contest (Senior Category) was Sekolah Bina Insan Yayasan MSU (Muhammad Aliff bin Norhamizam, Muhamad Afif bin Muhamad Rizuan and Zulhafidz bin Ngisa).

Meanwhile, in Virtual Robotics (Junior Category) Mi’ Mar Muhammad Sinan bin Hafizulfahmi from Sekolah Rendah Islam Al-Amin Gombak was the top winner and in Virtual Robotics (Senior Category) Orhan Ghazi bin Hafizulfahmi from Sekolah Menengah Islam Al-Amin Gombak took the first place.

These students were the top finalists at the national level before they proceeded to represent Malaysia to compete against participants from Australia, Chile, China, Colombia, France, Japan, Hong Kong, Macau, the Philippines, and South Korea. Winners of URC 2022 received an ArtecRobo 2.0 kit from Artec Co., Ltd. This year’s URC 2022 recorded a total of 81 participants for Idea Contest and 655 participants for Virtual Robotics during the Malaysia national rounds.

Organized by Artec Co., Ltd from Japan, Universal Robotics Challenge is an international robotics competition for elementary and junior high school students. This year’s event was officially hosted by the Universal Robotics Challenge Executive Committee comprising 38 judges from 14 countries.  The international round of project evaluation concluded in October.

Mr Etsu Fujiwara, Committee Member and President of Artec Co., Ltd. said, “As we still continue to feel the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic well into this year, we’re grateful to still be able to hold our Universal Robotics Challenge albeit in an exclusively online format. Our theme for this year centered around traffic safety. It was hard to hide my surprise at the sheer level of safety awareness and ingenuity shown by each participant’s work. It’s an honor to think this competition may help our participants to flourish in our ever-changing world. Congratulations to all winners and to all participants in URC 2022, keep your enthusiasm up and keep learning.”

As the National Host, Ms Ainaa Rosli, CEO of Tech Up said, “Tech Up would like to congratulate all participants for this year’s URC 2022, especially first-time schools and students that were courageous to take the first step towards learning robotics and applying STEM. SK Sg Udang’s win in this year’s Idea Contest was years in the making. The school first started their journey in robotics by renting an ArtecRobo set. They then obtained a free ArtecRobo set through the Robot4School program organized by Tech Up Kids Learning in 2020. Their success today is an example of consistency and dedication of the school, teachers, and students over the course of 3 years!”

In Idea Contest, participants were asked to create their project using a physical ArtecRobo set and upload a video of it on YouTube, and in Virtual Robotics students were tested on their programming skills using an online robotics simulator software on a web browser. 

“Tech Up is also deeply honored because a software we’ve developed, GoTechUp x ArtecRobo, was chosen as the official software for Virtual Robotics for the second time by URC. The gamified software for URC 2022 was developed with a theme centered around traffic safety that enabled students to strategize and complete missions while applying the robotics programming concept of ArtecRobo,” Ainaa added.

Since it began in 2017, this year was the first time URC had participants from countries in Latin America such as Colombia and Chile as well as new participants from China and the Philippines. Artec Co. is pleased with the increased response and hopes more will join from Canada, Egypt, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, the UK, and the USA.

Founded in 2018, Tech Up Sdn. Bhd. is a Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education solutions provider. Tech Up has since grown into a gamified educational software developer with its primary virtual robotics software, GoTechUp.

The Company has been the National Host of the Universal Robotics Challenge since 2019 and is the sole distributor of Japan-based Artec Co, Ltd.’s robotics products.