Robots in Motion as Young Innovators Light Up the 4th IEEE Sarawak Robotics Competition

The IEEE Sarawak Robotics Bootcamp and Competition 2025 marked the fourth successful edition of IEEE Sarawak Subsection’s flagship STEM outreach program, bringing hands-on robotics education to secondary school students across Kuching.

Designed as a learning-first competition, the program combined structured training with authentic problem-solving, ensuring that students were not merely competing but genuinely developing technical skills, confidence, and teamwork along the way.

From Strong Foundations to Continued Evolution

First introduced in 2018, the IEEE Sarawak Robotics Bootcamp and Competition was met with strong interest from schools and quickly established itself as a flagship educational outreach initiative of the IEEE Sarawak Subsection. In its early editions, the program typically engaged around 40-50 secondary school students, providing a focused and hands-on introduction to robotics. The program was held annually until 2020, when activities were temporarily halted due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Following the resumption of in-person events in 2024, the program returned to a larger, stable scale, engaging approximately 70 students across more than 20 teams, with strong repeat interest from participating schools. This level of participation was sustained in the 2025 edition, reflecting renewed confidence from schools and the effectiveness of the program’s structure.

Building on the momentum of its return, the 2025 edition expanded the pool of robotics equipment and supporting resources, enabling the program to better accommodate participants and strengthen the learning experience. This expansion also supports future plans to introduce greater variation in competition track designs and challenge configurations, allowing the flagship event to scale sustainably while maintaining its focus on hands-on learning and good engineering practice.

From Learning to Application

The program began with a hands-on bootcamp session held on 2 August 2025, where students were introduced to robotics fundamentals using the mBot robot platform. Under the guidance of IEEE volunteers and facilitators, participants learned basic programming concepts, robot control, and debugging techniques.

Crucially, the program included a multi-week gap between training and competition, giving teams time to reflect, experiment, and refine their solutions independently. This structure encouraged self-directed learning and mirrored real engineering workflows that involves plan, prototype, test, and improve.

Broad Reach, Meaningful Participation

This year’s program reached a broad cross-section of the local school community, involving 67 secondary school students who formed 21 teams from schools across Kuching. The competition was structured into Junior and Senior categories to accommodate participants with different experience levels, ensuring that both newcomers and more advanced students could engage meaningfully with the challenges. To ensure equitable participation, IEEE Sarawak loaned robotics kits to all teams, removing access to hardware as a barrier and allowing students from diverse backgrounds to fully participate, experiment, and learn through hands-on experience.

Beyond the competition itself, the IEEE Sarawak Robotics Bootcamp and Competition serves as a unifying platform that brings together members of the IEEE Sarawak Subsection, volunteers and facilitators from across the campus, as well as participating schools, teachers, and students. Spanning the bootcamp sessions, independent preparation period, and final competition day, the program unfolds over the course of a month, creating a sustained period of engagement rather than a single isolated event.

Throughout this period, students, educators, and IEEE members interact as a cohesive community to share knowledge, troubleshoot challenges, and celebrate progress in robotics and technology together. This extended format fosters collaboration across institutions and age groups, strengthening ties between schools and the IEEE community while reinforcing a shared enthusiasm for STEM. The result is not only a competition, but a collective experience that celebrates technology, learning, and mentorship across the Sarawak engineering and education ecosystem.

Competition Day: Skills in Action

The competition concluded on 6 September 2025, where teams demonstrated their solutions in a structured, fair, and supportive environment overseen by volunteer judges.

In the Junior Category (RoboRace Challenge), teams programmed their robots to autonomously navigate a race track and stop accurately within a designated finish zone. Final scores were calculated using a weighted framework that prioritised lap time, while also recognising performance quality, such as stability and line-tracking accuracy, and technical design, including logic structure and originality. Each robot was allowed up to three runs, with the first successful attempt recorded, reinforcing the importance of reliability over repeated trial-and-error adjustments. The competition track is only revealed on the day, which requires teams to rely on sound logic rather than memorised paths.

The Senior Category (PathFinder Challenge) extended these concepts further by requiring robots to autonomously navigate a labyrinth with variable layouts, detect walls and guidelines, avoid collisions, and stop precisely at the exit. The same balanced scoring framework was applied, with emphasis on lap time, performance accuracy, and technical design. Strict rules on collisions, starting conditions, and finish accuracy meant that teams had to prioritise robust control logic and consistent behaviour, which mirrors the challenges faced in autonomous robotics systems beyond the classroom.

Competition Highlights

In the Junior Category, SMK Sungai Tapang emerged as overall champion, followed by another team from SMK Sungai Tapang as 1^st runner-up, while SMK Jalan Arang secured 2^nd runner-up.

The Senior Category was dominated by Chung Hua Middle School No. 1, whose teams impressively swept all three top positions, namely Champion, 1^st runner-Up and 2^nd runner-Up.

A new award, the Best Presentation Category, was also introduced this year to recognize technical and presentation excellence. The award went to Lodge Secondary School in the Junior Category and SMK Kuching High in the Senior Category.

While awards were given, the emphasis remained on learning outcomes, sportsmanship, and collaboration rather than winning alone.

Sustained Impact Beyond the Event

Now in its fourth iteration, the IEEE Sarawak Robotics Bootcamp and Competition has grown into a recognised annual outreach initiative, with strong repeat interest from participating schools. Feedback from teachers and past participants indicates that many students gain greater confidence in STEM subjects, with some going on to pursue further studies in engineering and computing fields.

In addition to these outcomes, feedback from student participants has provided valuable insights into how the program can continue to evolve. Many students expressed interest in working with additional sensors to improve navigation reliability and explore more advanced decision-making behaviours. Others highlighted the potential of making greater use of the mBot platform’s available interfaces, allowing them to experiment with richer input-output interactions beyond basic line-following tasks. Students also suggested expanding the competition format with auxiliary station challenges inspired by escape-room concepts, where robots are required to complete sequential tasks as part of the overall run, adding an additional layer of problem-solving and system integration. Several participants further proposed livestreaming competition segments so that peers, teachers, and family members could follow the event in real time or asynchronously, extending the learning experience beyond those physically present at the venue.

The program also serves as a leadership and service platform for IEEE members, including student volunteers, who gain valuable experience in organising large-scale educational activities and mentoring younger learners. Through careful design, committed volunteers, and strong community engagement, the IEEE Sarawak Robotics Bootcamp and Competition 2025 delivered meaningful educational impact that extends well beyond a single event day.