Warman Competition is an annual event held in Monash University Malaysia. It is a design & build project which involves of the Mechanical & Mechatronics disciplines from the School of Engineering. The main objective of this project is to develop and enhance essential skills required for future real world purposes among participants such as leadership, teamwork, crew resource management, error recovery and engineering knowledge.
Warman Competition 2017 was held on 05 & 06 May 2017, with participants in teams of four members each competing with each other in order to obtain the best overall performance. The main task of this year's competition was to design and build a simulation of an automated system to sort, transport and deliver ore (golf balls) and waste (squash balls & racquetballs) to their respective bins through a terrain (track). The system with the shortest runtime and the most accurate sort and delivery system will be crowned champion.
I was allocated to group SWAR14, along with another three members from Mechanical Engineering. Being in an all-Mechanical-students team, it was really a challenge for all of us as we were required to utilize programming skills to command Arduino to perform and complete the tasks of the competition. After numerous meetings and discussions, we've finally came up with a mutual agreement on a solution, i.e. two members work on the mechanical design of the robot while two members work on the programming of the robot.
Weeks passed by like lightning as the early bird challenge was due. Me and my teammates had put in much effort to perform the very best, but unfortunately we weren't able to make it in time to earn the 100% early bird bonus. As days gone by quickly, the stress and pressure of not completing the early bird run was piling up and it soon affected our performance. We didn't give up just yet. We continue troubleshooting and seek assistance from friends and seniors.
The crucial moment had finally arrived. The major competition was within few days time and we were yet to complete our early bird run. We stayed back after classes daily a few days before the competition to try our best to beat the deadline. With full determination and persistence, we continue our testing while we camped overnight in campus. The frustration and disappointment was overwhelming but we finally managed to get our robot to function properly and sealed the 75% early bird score just a few hours before the actual competition.
It was time for the competition. The 1st heat was carried out on Friday while the 2nd heat was carried out on Saturday. My team were able to clinch a fairly respectable result in the 1st heat, but our results were messed up for the 2nd heat as the robot didn't perform well. However, we were thankful that the early bird score was recorded as that score was used to replace the not-so satisfactory result. It was indeed a blessing to us as we were able to get a good results for the competition despite having multiple failures during the testing stages.
In final words, it was certainly a valuable experience to us with lots of lessons learnt, capabilities discovered and achievements unlocked. I'm sincerely grateful to be working with a team who'd put in loads of efforts and spent countless sleepless nights to meet our goals. A huge shout-out to my teammates of SWAR14 ! Thank you so much for the hardwork ! Great job ! 😊👏
#WarmanCompetition2017 #MechanicalEngineering #MonashUniversity
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