JOHOR BAHRU, 26 – 29 May. – UTM IET On Campus club has organized a 4-day workshop called Hanson Urban Camp (HUC), a program and competition related to robotics building in collaboration with Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), IET, JPNJ, Jazari Innovation Club, IEEE, and UTM XCITE and sponsored by JAZRO, Printious, Move Robotic, and UTM Alumni.
This program was conducted at UTM Makerspace, S01 Kolej Tuanku Canselor, UTM, from 26th until 29th of May 2022 and received warm participation from 12 teachers from six different secondary schools around Johor Bahru.
The main objective of this program is to introduce the practical concepts of STEM through robotics workshops to the teachers and designed to cultivate a sense of interest in robotics and STEM elements in practice in the teachers themselves in hope that all the teachers will deliver back what they have learned in this program to their respective students soon.
The program also prepares students to become “Life Ready Graduates”, which means that the focus is not solely on technical skills but also includes an additional module on time and stress management.
On 26th May, the first day of the Hanson Urban Camp program started at 12:30 PM with the registration of the participants, followed by a short briefing by our program director, Ms Rabiatul Adawiyah Binti Ayub.
Then, an Ice Breaking session among all the participants ensued, which was conducted by Mr Nurul Aziz from UTM Counselor.
The participants, which consisted of teachers from a few secondary schools around Johor Bahru, were having fun and getting to know each other during this activity.
Mr Nurul conducted a few fun games in which they had to draw each other’s faces and build a paper plane for the participants, that were also joined by some of the crew members and provided valuable insights and feedback on the program’s objectives and outcomes.
The second day of the HUC program started with the main module, “Module 2: Safety, Terminology, Tools & Software”, which was delivered by Ms Rabiatul Adawiyah binti Ayub, the Program Director of Hanson Urban Camp.
In this module, all the terminologies used were explained as they may be new to the teachers. The tools used and their safety were explained to avoid any implications and incidents.
After that, the next module was introduced, which was delivered by Mr Mohd Hiddan bin Maksan, Vice Director of Jazari Innovation Club, “Module 3: Electronics Circuit”, which focused on the main electrical components and the connections of it that participants were going to use in their robot design.
After completing both modules at around 10 am, all participants and crews went to the lake beside Balai Keselamatan UTM for a Kayak water activity by an instructor from Kelab Kayak UTM who will do the briefing and demonstration before all participants, and some of the crews were having fun kayaking around the lake.
The program then proceeded with the next module, “Module 4: Time & Stress Management, ” delivered by the speaker, Mr Nurul Aziz from UTM Counselor.
The speaker not just gave a talk on how to manage time and stress as a person, teacher, and also student but also asked the participants and crew to play a game in which the objective was to understand the concept of releasing stress and some depression problems.
The next session of the second day then proceeded at 8:00 PM for the next activity, which was “Practical 1: Electronics Circuit”, which was handled by facilitators from UTM Jazari Innovation Club by dividing the participants into four groups with 3 participants and 1 facilitator in each group.
The facilitators helped distribute the required components that were needed for the Electronics circuit practical 1 to all the participants. Then, all of them started to implement the electrical components to the microcontroller PCB board by soldering it.
On 28th May, the third day of HUC started with a frisbee game that was held at courts in front of K9 College and led by Mohammad Hazeeq Akmal Bin Mohammad Sofian from the Activity Unit.
At 10:00 am, “Module 5: Programming Robot” started and was delivered by the speaker, Fikry Akmal Aizuddin Bin Bahrim, Vice President of Jazari Innovation Club.
This module focuses on programming and coding the Sumo Robot that has been designed and on the programming language and the software that needed to be used, which was Arduino IDE software.
The next module, “Module 6: UTM Drone Lab Visit ” started at 2:00 PM and was conducted by Ir. Dr Ing. Mohd Nazri Bin Mohd Nasir from UTM Aerolab at the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Laboratory (UAV Lab), UTM.
During the module, the conductor gave some explanations and briefing about drones and the background of the Aerolab and then the participants and crews were given a chance to learn and play with the drones.
The third session of the second day began with the activity “Practical 2: Programming Robot”, which was conducted by facilitators from Jazari Innovation Club.
This activity is focused on writing and uploading the coding from the Arduino IDE software to the Maker Nano controller, and it was sequential for Module 5: Programming Robot in the morning. Participants must program their robot with a specific algorithm and ensure it can function well.
The program then continued with the last activity of the day, “Practical 3: Final Robot 1”, which started at 8:30 PM that was also conducted by facilitators from Jazari Innovation Club.
For the practical on Final Robot 1, all the participants continued to complete their robot building with the electronics part of the robot, such as connecting all the components and controller to the 3D printed board.
Some of the groups also did some troubleshooting on some of the electrical parts that were not functioning well and tried to edit the coding part.
On the final day, the program started at 8:00 AM with “Practical 4: Final Robot 2” after everyone had their breakfast and was conducted by facilitators from Jazari Innovation Club as it was the sequel to Practical 3.
The objective of this activity is to allow the participants to make some makeover on their robot design, such as adding some tools to it depending on their creativity and finalizing the robot functions to be prepared for the “Robot Inter-Group Championship”.
The program then proceeded with the “Robot Inter-Group Championship” competition, also conducted by facilitators from Jazari Innovation Club, starting with an interview session where the participants needed to explain their robot design and functionality to the judges.
After the interview session, the Robot Inter-Group Championship then proceeded with the Sumo Robot session, where each group had to fight each other following a round-robin concept and the winner with the highest recorded marks was announced at the end of the competition.
The Hanson Urban Camp program ended with a closing ceremony starting from the speech by program directors and VIPs and followed by the gimmick, program montage presentation, mock cheque ceremony, dance performance by Citra Daksina, presentation of souvenirs, and ended with a photography session to commemorate the successful event.