Hanoi (VNA) – The journey of LH-FOF team from Vietnam's Lac Hong University at the 2026 Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union Robot Contest (ABU Robocon) in Hong Kong (China) officially came to an end on the evening of August 23, securing third place overall.
The rules of this year’s edition transformed the competition arena into a “dojo”. Each team had to coordinate seamlessly between a manually controlled robot and a fully autonomous robot. Teams were tasked with collecting Kung-Fu Scrolls (KFS) – cube-shaped blocks – and successfully arranging them into a continuous tic-tac-toe sequence known as “Kung Fu Master”. The first team to complete the sequence would win the match.
Representing the nation, LH-FOF entered the quarter-finals (Round 2-4) against Thailand, with 60 Vietnamese supporters cheering from the stands.
From the start, their Robot 1 unexpectedly encountered a technical problem, allowing the Thai team to take an early lead. However, the match took a dramatic turn when the Thai robot was unable to overcome a slope on the competition field. Showing composure under pressure, Vietnam’s team members quickly resolved the problem and accelerated. LH-FOF staged a remarkable comeback, successfully completing the tic-tac-toe sequence and achieving “Kung Fu Master” at 152 seconds into the 180-second match.
In the first semi-final, the Vietnamese representatives faced the hosts, Hong Kong 1 (the University of Hong Kong). However, a technical fault occurring in the opening seconds prevented LH-FOF’s robot system from keeping pace with their opponents. The “Kung Fu Quest” of the young Vietnamese engineers thus came to an end with a joint third-place finish. The team remained one of the competition’s highlights, winning three awards: third place overall, the best design award and a sponsor’s award. Its speed record in the group stage, together with its composed comebacks, not only added to Lac Hong University’s record of achievements but also left a distinctive mark for Vietnamese students on the regional stage.
This year’s competition featured 16 squads from Cambodia, Egypt, Hong Kong (China), Macao (China), China, Fiji, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Mongolia, Nepal, Kazakhstan, Thailand and Vietnam.
Hong Kong 1 emerged as the champion with 240 points, achieving “Kung Fu Master” at 75 seconds into the 180-second match./.
VNA
