Robocon Cambodia 2022, the top robot contest in the Kingdom, will return for its ninth edition on June 26, with selected university students bringing their automatons together under a theme and rules based on the southern Indian game of “lagori”.

Robocon Cambodia has been organised by the state-run National Television of Cambodia (TVK) and the Ministry of Information since 2014.

The contest sees undergraduate students from across the Kingdom’s universities and institutes design and create functional robots for a national tournament based on a game that changes every year in line with the host the ABU Asia-Pacific Robot Contest (ABU Robocon) country.

This year New Delhi is hosting ABU Robocon, so the theme and rules are based on “lagori”, a game involving a ball and a pile of flat stones.

Nine teams from five schools have passed selective processes of training and testing.

The Cambodia Academy of Digital Technology (CADT), the National Polytechnic Institute of Cambodia (NPIC), the Insitute of Technology of Cambodia (ITC) and the National University of Management (NUM) have each sent two teams, while CamTech University has sent one.

Thlang Sochen, a teacher and mentor at UPIC, said the school made an announcement for interested students to apply, who were then tested.

“They have to take mathematics, physics and mechanical design. After they passed, they formed groups for making the robots.

“The teams consist of students in mechanics or electronics, who went through four to six weeks of additional training to make robots,” Sochen said.

The teams worked together to put what they learned from electronic circuit design and software programming into building a robot.

Then they tested and retested the robots under Sochen’s supervision to improve performance.

Touch Sopheak, part of one of the NPIC teams, said his team is now working hard to improve their robots after every trial and test.

“For my team, in the past week of testing with our mentor, we noticed our robots’ weaknesses. The ball-shooting robot appeared to not be strong enough to make the stack fall down, while the stack-arranging robot was a bit slow.

“We have to find solution to speed up and boost the accuracy of our robots so we will be able to compete effectively at the upcoming tournament,” Sopeak said.

Robocon Cambodia will find a winning team and a best runner-up, with a Best Idea Award, Best Engineering Award, Best Design Award, Popular Awards and Special award from a sponsoring company.

Only the winning team will get the chance to compete at ABU Robocon 2022, which will be held at the Thyagraj Stadium in New Delhi from August 19-23.

Cambodia will be the host country for ABU Robocon 2023, on August 28 next year. Teams from than 20 countires are expected to join the event.

Information Ministrt Khieu Kanharith held a meeting with the ABU Robocon committee on June 10 to discuss the plans, preparations, rules and theme for ABU Robocon 2023, which will be based on Cambodian culture and tradition.

Organisers are giving away free tickets for Robocon Cambodia on June 26, 2022 – which is being held at the Dombol Tuk Hall at the Royal University of Phnom Penh (RUPP) – via their official Facebook page.

The competition will be broadcast live on TVK.

There will also be a robot and tech exhibition open to the public on June 25 ahead of Robocon Cambodia.