Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
RC gladiators tool up for ‘RoboMasters III’
THE WAR cry has sounded and soldiers are preparing for battle in a huge arena. Like in ancient times, thousands of spectators will gather to watch gladiators, from a different world, spar.
But this battle is more like a scene from Transformers, where robots go head to head.
The world’s biggest robotics competition, RoboMasters, will be held in Shenzhen, China later this month.
In its third year, the event takes place in a stadium with thousands attending the event and many more watching the games online.
Organisers say for five days more than 7 000 students from 200 universities from around China compete for a prize of R400 000 and an opportunity to work at China-based Da-Jiang Innovations, a drone manufacturing company, who also fund this competition.
Da-Jiang Innovation spokesman Oliver Wang said this year 10 teams from other countries, including the US, Canada, Europe and Singapore, would also compete.
Each round pits two teams, controlling robots, against each other.
The robots move around a field collecting ammunition (golf balls), ideally without tipping over.
The goal is to reach the opposing team’s base station. The robots shoot at each other, aiming at sensitive plates on their armour. When enough pellets or golf balls hit those plates, the robots die or shut down.
Last year’s winners were the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China. The secret to their victory, they told local media, was a robotic tank which they called the Demon King.
It was able to obtain golf balls, through a vacuum, faster than any other robot on the field, giving them an advantage over their opponents.
Wang said infantry bots fire smaller rubber pellets. “Golf balls are purposely tougher to acquire and each team has to create a system to acquire them swiftly and efficiently.”
Teams who can access the golf balls, stored in containers on the field, the fastest and take out the enemy usually win the match.
Teams have created robots with a wide variety of mechanical add-ons, from vacuums to wheels on stilts.
Wang said: “It gives young engineers an opportunity to showcase their robotic skills.”
A good engineer should have good technical abilities, be able to work in a team and understand market demands.”
He said the students were not only competing for cash prizes, but auditioning for jobs at the company too.
The mechanical engineering during the tournament usually wows the crowd, but the real hi-tech stuff happens out of sight, in the software to create these robots.
Wang said the students use Computer Vision, the same technology that equips self- driving cars to navigate roads.
The computers must be able to scan visual data, recognise what it sees and then perform actions based on this information.
So, for example, when a self-driving car comes to a stop street, it must know to stop.
In RoboMasters, the robots were able to return fire at enemy robots without human help.
Founder and chief executive of Da-Jiang Innovation Frank Wang said the competition was about sharing his passion for robots with younger generations.
He believed, like sports stars create entertainment, so the competition brings engineers and entertainment together to create tomorrow’s entrepreneurs and inventors.
“It also helps the public appreciate what rocket scientists and engineers do.
“We think it is important to help students to become excellent engineers.
“For most of them, this competition is a once-in-alifetime experience.”
The competition has made stars out of nerdy teenagers. There are live feeds on the competition and documentaries on participants creating their robots.
There is even an animation series which has turned contestants into action heroes.
In one online documentary, Jing Ning Li, a student at Nanyang University of Singapore, said the competition pushed her into the spotlight.
“My face was even on a huge billboard. Hundreds of young children watch this competition.
“They can think to themselves: ‘Wow, I’m going to do this when I grow up.’ I will really encourage more girls to compete.”
Frank Wang’s story is an inspiring one.
He started the company when he was still at university and never dreamed of becoming a billionaire.
Flying radio-controlled aircrafts was a hobby since high school.
He followed his desire to make these aircraft more accessible to the public.
So his hobby became his dream job.
He once told university students: “There are winds (business opportunities) coming to you from every direction, but if you don’t have your own idea and just follow the others, none of the winds will be your tailwind.”