Preservation of arts and culture can go hand in hand with technological development. This message emerged from the participation of the Yogyakarta State University (UNY) Robot Team in the Regional 2 Dance Robot Contest in 2022 at the Sepuluh November Institute of Technology, Surabaya. The UNY robot team featured Robot Rosemery, who danced Kancet Ledo and won second place. This robot contest is a part of the Indonesian Robot Contest (KRI). In KRI, there are six categories of Indonesian ABU Robot Contest (KRAI), Indonesian Search and Rescue Robot Contest (KRSRI), Indonesian Football Robot Contest (KRSBI) on wheels, Indonesian Football Robot Contest (KRSBI) Humanoid, Indonesian Dance Robot Contest (KRSTI) and the Indonesian Thematic Robot Contest (KRTMI).
A girl usually dances the Kancet Ledo dance originating from East Kalimantan. This dance depicts the tenderness of a woman, beauty, and intelligence. The movements in this dance are more focused on hand movements when waving, body movements, and foot movements when stepping and standing on the gong. All the movements were played with tenderness. This dance does look simple, but flexibility and balance are needed and become the basis for dancing this one dance to create beautiful and pleasing movements.
The UNY robot team seeks to reflect the philosophy and movements of the Lendo dance through Robot Rosemery. "In this contest, the Rosemery Team has a distinctive appearance following the theme of this year's Indonesian Dance Robot Contest, namely by wearing Dayak Batik clothes," said Rosemery Team Leader, Leandra Okta. To support Rosemery's performance, apart from spotlighting that leads to the robot while dancing, the team also prepared several different movement modes for the Preliminary and Final Rounds.
To present the robot well, Durrotun Berliana as the team manager, stated that before the competition, the team had made mental preparations. "Mental preparation is essential. It will affect the team performance when the robot somehow faces any technical difficulty and needs a quick repair and solution. Without a strong mentality, trivial things may hamper the team performance," she said.
In addition to mental readiness, the team also thoughtfully prepared more flexible and graceful movements according to the tempo of the dance songs that the Organizing Committee had determined. The electronics division routinely checks all wiring components. The job of the mechanic division is to check the nuts and bolts on the robot frame to make sure the robot is sturdy when dancing. While the artistic division ensures that the robot's clothes are checked, the robot is ready to dance beautifully.
In the preliminary round, the Rosemery robot was ranked 5th and was qualified to participate in the final of KRI region 2. In the preliminary and final stages of the first appearance, the robot danced smoothly with one retry. However, on the second performance, the Rosemery Robot had trouble where the robot did not move according to the program that had been prepared. However, the robot operators quickly overcame the problem due to their alacrity. With more effort in the final round of the Indonesian Dance Robot Contest, Rosemery won second place. "I am happy about this achievement. I hope the team can perform better in the next Indonesian Robot Contest," said the supervisor of the Rosemery Robot team, Herlambang Sigit Pramono, S.T., M.Cs.
