31 August 2011

For the very first time a Russian team has taken part in the ABU Asia-Pacific Robot Contest 2011 (ABU ROBOCON 2011) held this year in Thailand.

18 teams competed in the most prestigious competition in the region. Russia was represented by the team from Saratov State University, which had shown the best results on the national stage of the competition, held during the Robofest National Robotics Festival, the leading event of the “Robotics: engineering and technical talent for an innovative Russia” programme.

ABU ROBOCON was first held in 2002 for students from universities of the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union (ABU). ABU is a nongovernmental, nonprofit professional association of radio and television broadcasters, with a combined audience of over 3,5 billion people. RTR, the federal Russian channel, is the representative of Russia in ABU. In Thailand the Russian team was presented by the Russia-2 channel, with the support of Oleg Deripaska’s Volnoe Delo Foundation.

After their victory at the national stage of the competition the team spent four and a half months developing robots under the requisitions of the international competition. The robots the team had created passed the qualification round and were admitted into the competition, however this year the team from Thurakit Pandint University, Thailand-1, became the winner of ABU ROBOCON.

“Of course we are a bit upset, who wouldn’t want to win? But on the other hand this is our first time participating in the competition. The biggest achievement for us, the programme and everyone in it – is the desire to continue working and striving to win!”, - said the Robotics Programme director Maxim Petrov.