NEW DELHI: The Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union’s Robocon, aimed at encouraging a scientific temperament among engineering students in the Asia Pacific region, is commencing in Pune on 22 August in collaboration with Doordarshan.
This is the second time that the event is being held in India, the first being 2008. The 13th ABU International Contest will be organised at the Balewadi Sports Complex and will conclude on 25 August. It was held for the first time in Japan in 2002.
In fact, DD organises college and national level university contests every year to shortlist participants for this contest.
This year’s theme is ‘A Salute to Parenthood’, where a manual (robot) takes his or her child (robot) to the park to play games like sea-saw, swings, pole walk and jungle Jim. The game will be for three minutes each.
Earlier, this was handled by the Directorate General of Doordarshan but in 2005 it was handed over to Doordarshan Kendra of Mumbai which runs it in collaboration with the Maharashtra Institute of Technology.
In the national finals held in March this year in Pune, 89 teams took part including seven IITs. The Robocon team of Nirma University of Ahmedabad emerged victorious while the team of VJTI from Mumbai was the first runners-up. These two teams will represent India.
Broadcasters and Robocon teams from a total of 17 countries are taking part.
