A workshop regarding theme and rules of Robocon 2009 was held on 14^th September 2008, Sunday at 10.00am. The purpose of having this workshop is to have a clear understanding of the theme and Rules of Robocon Competition 2009. The theme of Robocon 2009 is “Travel together for the Victory Drums” is a game based on an imaginary journey of olden days using the Kago palanquin. Each group must have 3 robots which are automatic carrier, manual carrier, and an automatic traveler robot. The idea of this game is to have an automatic carrier to lead the way and the automatic traveler is inside the kago meanwhile the manual carrier will be at the back of the cargo to maintain the flexibility. Through out the way there are many obstacles such as mounting, crossing and boarding. The goal is achieved when the traveler robot beat the tree drums in the drum zone.

The workshop started with welcoming speech from Najib, president of UTPROBOCON team and overview of UTPRobocon team and the achievements. So far, our highest achievement is in UNITEN Robogamez where we managed to be in the 4^th place out of 63 groups. The president gave some tips to improve our performance in the future. Our president himself has come out with good example, he tried to explore new knowledge even though it is in different language.

After a little bit of overview, the explanation of the rules is presented by Jing Zhi and Syahmi. The session took around 2 hours when everyone was very eager to know and contribute their ideas. Many questions were asked in order to know the rules with more details. Dr.Irraivan also had contributed his ideas to the team members. Once the session finish, every member was asked to work in a pair to produce the design of the robot. There are 14 groups and 3 robots should be design. Therefore, the total design that we will have is 52 designs. The presentation of the design will be held next week on 21^st September 2008 at 10.00am.