KUCHING – Three-time national champion Swinburne University of Technology Sarawak Campus once again came close to winning the Freescale Cup Worldwide Finals in Seoul, South Korea, recently.
The team’s intelligent race car did not take the checkered flag but made it to the top three spot to take second runner-up at the Olympic Stadium of Hanyang University.
The car of robotics and mechatronics engineering undergraduate students William Zon Kok Weng, John Ranga Dinej Fernando, and Lim Hong Jian was 1.19 seconds behind champion University of Science and Technology Beijing, and 1.2 seconds behind first runner-up University of Electronic Science and Technology China.
This is the second time the team has come close to winning the international round of the competition. Last year it was first runner-up in Harbin, China, losing to defending champion University of Science and Technology Beijing but beat other teams from Europe, Japan and the US.
“Next year the winner of the national leg will represent Malaysia at the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuit in Germany. We’ll do our best to implement the best strategy for a win in the regional competition,” said engineering lecturer Dr Hudyjaya Siswoyo Jo who supervised the team with his brother teaching assistant, Riady Siswoyo Jo.
“We have gained more experience each time we compete, so we are banking on what we’ve learned through the years,” said the Indonesian who has led the team to three consecutive national championship titles in 2012, 2013 and 2014.
Some 17 teams from nine regions including those from the US, Europe and Japan, competed in the Seoul event.
The participating teams had a rare opportunity to see the founder of the competition, Professor Myungho Sunwoo, in person. The director of Automotive Control and Electronics Lab (ACE Lab) and a prominent researcher in the area of autonomous vehicle and electric vehicle, showed participants how the technologies developed for the competition can be expanded and implemented onto an actual vehicle.