Photo Gallery 039: A Battle Of Robots, Innovation And Wits

(Chinese Version)

Editor's Note:

After global RoboMasters Competition 2016, with 228 participating teams from 160 universities worldwide drew to an end, we were attracted to this group of young and aspiring college students. Many investment organizations invested in robot-related projects amid the trend of robotic entrepreneurship in China. However, there are few times for these newly-developed robots to get together and compete with each other. This is only the second year RoboMaster was held.

In TMTpost Photo Gallery 039, let’s take a look at these young college students and their robots.

[Click here to watch the video]

This is the headquarter of SPR Robot Team, from China University of Petroleum. A robot named “Hero” began to radiate a ray of green light after it was started.

Gong Pugang, as the 11th captain of SPR, led the team to participate in Robocon Asia Pacific College Student Robot Competition for three times and RoboMasters National College Student Robot Competition for two times. After becoming a first-year student for Master degree, he resigned. During this year’s RoboMaster competition, Mr. Gong led his team all the way from repechage match to the final match, though defeated by a team from the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China. “Their team is better than any other team, and we have nothing to say to be defeated by them,” Gong was quite envious of the automatic sighting ability of the gold prize winner’s robots.

All the robots of SPR took a group picture under the team flag of SPR. In RoboMasters match, both the team are composed of infantry robot, hero and base. The competing team would “fight” with each other in a hall with complicated geographical conditions. The robots are controlled by operators in operating room in a way similar to CF games.

On September, 17th, the theme and rules of the 16th National Robocon Robot Competition were released. After receiving all the related materials, SPR team members got together and discuss their coping strategies and development focus. The competition was to be held in eight to ten months later.

The robot fell when climbing a pole a few hours before a group match of Robocon, and thus paralyzed. “This robot was the hero of our team and witnessed several generations of our team members,” Gong explained to TMTpost, “The more you devote to a robot, the more it would pay back; the better it performed, the happier you would become; the more proud of the robot, the more upset you would be when it broke down due to your carelessness.”

Pang Zhe is a junior student majoring in Safety Engineering at China University of Petroleum. He’s joined SPR for half a year and was currently a mechanician. He was supposed to run test and adjust the robot before competitions. The proudest thing for him is to see his team’s robot win a prize in competition.

This is the machine tool of SPR. “Our technological level is still quite medium, so there’s still a huge gap between us and teams with a longer history,” Gong explained, “Every team has its own advantages. SPR is very good at mechanic design so our robot and be upgraded rapidly. We have rich technologies and lots of machines to achieve this goal.”

Genggeng is a super fan of electromechanical design and is very interested in solving technical problems. He made a drone by himself recently driven by curiosity.

Theoretically, they have to develop different robots for different competitions with different rules and themes. However, since the budget is very limited, they have to disassemble core parts from old robots to make new ones, while the rest parts will become “vacant”.

Team member Wang Wensong was discussing with his team members about the new themes and rules of the next Robocon competition. Wang was a senior student and was busy finding a job recently. His ideal employer is DJI Innovations, which was also a sponsor of RoboMasters. The drone maker regarded the competition as one of the most important platforms to find and nurture talents.

Pan Xueliang, member of SPR electronic control group, was running test on the robot “Hero”. Pan devoted most of his time after class to SPR lab. “Hero” was the most powerful robot and the leading attacker of SPR. His job is vital to “Hero”s performance.

Yu Zefan, an attack strategy guide of SPR, was supposed to look at the larger picture and deploy strategies accordingly. “I felt more pressure near the end of the competition. As an attack guide, my decision is vital to our robot’s performance. As long as I can make analyses and decisions quickly, our team will win at last. To some degree, one misjudgment of mine would cause our team to lose.”

At the door of SPR lab was displayed all the prizes they had won and their groups pictures. They were rewarded $14,995 as the silver prize winner of 2016 RoboMasters. However, they decided to award team members with little part of the money, while putting much part of the money for R&D of future competitions.

These are the “bullets” adopted in RoboMsters competition, and competing teams must control the robot to embark the “central island” to get these “bullets”. One of the reasons SPR failed was that their robot “Hero” failed to embark the island and get enough “bullets”.

The newly-appointed 12th team leader Tan Lin was preparing competition materials for the next Robocon. Every team leader’s tenure lasts for a year, and new team leader is appointed directly by the last team leader based on his or her professional capabilities.

A member of SPR was preparing his speech for a discussion of the team. New ideas and designs were come up with through a brainstorming process at discussions. The theme of the next Robocon is “”, and every participating team is supposed to develop one robot that could throw frisbee from different angles to different areas with different height. The team that gets the highest score win the first prize.

Most members of SPR went to robot companies after graduation, while some of the rest would start their own company. Compared to other students at China University of Petroleum, they had another choice. “We chose a career that has endless potential, and it is robot that gives us an opportunity to realize our dream,” a member of SPR told TMTpost.

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[The article is published and edited with authorization from the author @flybutchery, please note source and hyperlink when reproduce.]

Translated by Levin Feng (Senior Translator at PAGE TO PAGE), working for TMTpost.