Current location: CR8® Online™ | Home | Activities | Khong Brothers
As the Khong Brothers are extremely active,
this page gets outdated very, very quickly.
THE KHONG BROTHERS
Jun & Jian are the founders of CR8®'s unique, homebrew, time-tested syllabus; which have been in the making since 2003.
WHAT THEY DO
Well - coming to this page certainly proves you intrigued to what the Khong Brothers, Khong Yee Jun, Jian and Juan actually have been doing these past years. Well, in a nutshell they do everything normal youngsters do:
-- Eat (normal food and water; not nuts, bolts and oil!)
-- Sleep (as in getting some Zees [ZzZz]; not plug in & charge!)
-- Play (using a mouse, keyboard and monitor; not plugging into the 'Matrix'!)
-- Exercise (gym, lift weights, jogging, swimming, etc; not typing and soldering!)
-- Study (not downloading knowledge); Jun and Jian both got full scholarships!
-- Listen to music (e.g. Linkin Park, Akon, Rihanna, LMFAO, etc; not beeps and blips!)
-- Direct (Jun & Jian are now Directors of Creative Robotics Education Sdn Bhd)
However, besides those so-called luxuries, they also make good use of their spare time. Check out the (seriously concise) list of their activities below - it would've taken many gigs (Gigabytes, GB) of memory - about 140GB to be precise - to fully document all of their achievements & activities (in other words, Jun's Aperture library). Hence, to keep this page manageable, we've only included the most prominent activities/ achievements here.
WHAT THEY DID
Widely known as the Khong Brothers, Khong Yee Jun and Khong Yee Jian (and now, Juan) have been participating in countless robotic & build-design (Rekacipta) competitions in the state, national and international level since they were young - and have (very) often emerged victorious. Whereas an average kid would rather play computer games, remote control cars and Play Stations, Jun, Jian (and now - their youngest brother, Juan) CUSTOM BUILD computers, modify and tune remote control cars and dissect gaming consoles to see how they work.
The Khong Brothers have been teaching, conducting demos, and holding workshops since 2003, under the name of Khong Brothers Creative Robotics™ (Khong Brothers Cre8tiv RobotiX™). Now, our brand name is much simpler and eye-catching - CR8®. Jun, for example, has been tinkering around with electronic gadgetry for years, since he was young.
For example, Jun used to hack sweet containers or toys and turn them into torch lights, rechargeable handheld fans or self-navigating critters (mechanical bump-and-go machines that could navigate a room) when he was 9 or so. He built his first electric motor from scrap pieces of wire, straws and wood when he was 11. That was before he had the Internet!
When he was 14, he built his first humanoid (bipedal walking) robot out of LEGO® Mindstorms (purely his own design), and at 16, his first non-LEGO humanoid robot with some RC servomotors, hand-soldered microcontroller boards and a whole lot of double-sided tape (from scratch). The robot, called the Homoloid, could walk on two legs, kick a ball, shake hands, bow, cheer and sit down (but it couldn't get back up). Down the years, Homoloid evolved into our mascot robot, CyE III (Cybernetic Entity V3), pictured below.
Jun has even made robots for the local movie productions, and has helped a number of final-year students achieve 1st Class marks for their Final Year Projects (FYPs). The Khong Brothers have appeared in COUNTLESS newspaper articles and a number of TV programs.
LIFE IN THE FAST LANE
In 2004, they took part in their first international competition: the World Robot Olympiad (WRO 2004 - for more info, Google it) - held at the Marquee in Singapore. They were only 16 and 13 at the time, but they won the EXCELLENCE AWARD - something very impressive considering the fact that they built the award-winning MiBO, the 55cm tall humanoid Rhythmic Gymnastic robot all on their own without help from others!
In 2005, the Khong Brothers returned in the WRO 2005 - held in Bangkok, Thailand this time. Their participating robots? - a pair of 60cm tall, autonomous bipedal humanoid walking robots dubbed The Martians (their project was named The Mars Invasion). The Martians could walk forward, backward and even turn to the left and right. They had moving arms and could turn their heads to look at the audience. They even held custom-built glowing LED Martian light sabers (LED + liquid in a plastic tube). The result - they beat a number of countries and obtained the SILVER AWARD (you could say 2nd best in the world in their category at that time), losing by a stone's throw away to China!!!
In 2006, the Khong Brothers - retiring from the hectic world of international competitions - helped train a team to participate in the WRO 2006; held in Nanjing, China this time. The team obtained an Excellence Award. In the same year, Jun was invited to give tips and tricks to about 70 Maktab Rendah Sains MARA (MRSM) teachers during a workshop to prepare them and their students for the International Robot Olympiad (IRO 2006) held in Gold Coast, Australia.
Let's not forget - Jun was only 18 at that time. He was then invited to train and accompany a pair of elite MRSM teams to Australia! One of the teams proceeded to winning GOLD for the Vision Robot mission, while the other team won the BEST HUMANOID AWARD for the humanoid robot Jun helped them build (seems like Jun is good at building Humanoids). ;)
"Congrats, guys!" -- Jun
In 2007, the Khong Brothers shone once again when they helped a team from Sekolah Kebangsaan Taman Megah (SKTM) win a SILVER AWARD in the WRO 2007 once again! This time, the competition was held in the Chien Tien Activity Center, Taipei, Taiwan. Jun accompanied them to the competition as a mentor.
In 2008, Creative Robotics™ Teams (around 8 teams) took part in the NRC (National Robotics Competition) 2008 and won many awards, including multiple GOLD, SILVER, BRONZE and EXCELLENCE Awards. Among the students representing CR8® was none other than Khong Yee Juan, the youngest Khong Brother.
Returning with even more teams in 2009, CR8® Teams won GOLD and the MOST INNOVATIVE CONCEPT Award in the NRC yet again in the Open Category (which requires creative thinking, logical thinking, problem solving and engineering concepts). Juan's team - with him as the team leader - was the proud winner of some shiny trophies, medals, certificates and a LEGO set!
Update: We have stopped posting our achievements
as of 2010, because there are simply too many
of them! Sorry for any inconvinience caused.
Suffice to say that the Khongs (now with the whole Khong family involved) now JUDGE and HOST their own national and international competitions under their brand name, CR8®. (See Activities page). Jun has even been invited to be a JUDGE in the Open Category for the IRO 2009 Korea. CR8® also presented in the EROFA 2009 (http://erofa.or.kr/).
Microsoft® invited the Khong Brothers to present the Kodu Game Lab to the world during the 7th Asia Pacific Regional Innovative Forum (REIF) in the JW Mariott, Phuket, Thailand (it was a BLAST, all expenses paid and our bus even had law-defying police escorts!). Microsoft® Brunei also invited CR8® to present the Kodu Game Lab in Microsoft® Brunei HQ.
PLANTING THE SEEDS
In November 2007, we established Creative Robotics™ Learning Center, our very own company. With vast experience & syllabus gathered since 2003, we have since then helped countless individuals bring out (for lack of a better term) the robot within!
With cool activities involving awesome robots, we excel in promoting competitive creative thinking, logical thinking, problem solving, thinking both in and out of the box, hands-on attitude, dare-to-be-different, and determination - all of which are properties which are undoubtedly as important as a good Degree (or better) in today's fast-paced, technology-oriented, survival-of-the-fittest world!
CR8® IS GROWING | THE OUTREACH INITIATIVE
In 2011, Creative Robotics™ evolved into Creative Robotics Education Sdn Bhd, a private limited company with Jun (23) and Jian (20) as Directors. These young Directors now dedicate a lot of their time and effort in nurturing and developing their company. In June 2011, CR8® BR (Bukit Rimau) was opened, the first CR8® Business Partner. Fast forward a year, and the CR8® Outreach™ initiative spawned 5 more centers, with a total of 7 centers as of April 2012. By mid 2013, there will be 15 CR8® centers.
For a list of centers, please check the
Location page here.
TRIVIA | WHAT THEY (ALSO) DO
Besides building robots and winning competitions, the Khong Brothers also actively participate in sports and other outdoor activities. They frequently work out in the gym, play badminton, footsal, swimming, cycling, roller-blading, skate-boarding and jogging - Jun even represented his school in a bowling tournament once.
The Khong Brothers enjoy going to the movies and watching anime. Being very computer savvy (all their PCs are custom built), the Khong Brothers also enjoy all sorts of computer games - from the most sentimental games (Dune 2000 & Resident Evil 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5) to the more recent games.
Besides all the fun and games, the Khong Brothers are very active socially - with hundreds of friends in the flesh and on Facebook, MSN, YouTube, etc. Check out CR8® on Facebook here.
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