The HKUST Robocon Team received the Best Design Award in ABU Asia-Pacific Robot Contest 2021 Jimo, China, which was joined by 21 winning teams from 11 places on December 12. Organized annually by the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union (ABU), the ABU Asia-Pacific Robot Contest (ABU Robocon) was held online again this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Previously on June 20, the HKUST team formed into two sub-teams and won three awards altogether in the Robocon Hong Kong Contest 2021, organized by the Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation (HKSTP). The Fiery Dragon sub-team received championship (tied with Silver Striker team from the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK)) and Best Engineering Award, while the War Dragon sub-team was named the Second Runner-Up. The victory marks HKUST’s 11th championship in the contest. As joint champions of the Hong Kong contest, both HKUST and CUHK represented Hong Kong to compete in ABU Robocon 2021.

The theme for the contest this year was “Throwing Arrows into Pots”, which was essentially mimicking the pitch-pot game in traditional Chinese culture. Participants have to make use of their engineering knowledge to design and build two robots – a throwing robot and a defence robot – that can throw arrows into pots as well as defending against the other team’s arrows.

Fiery Dragon’s throwing robot is equipped with a rotational shooter, enabling it to shoot at any pots without rotating or moving the wheelbase. Aside from that, the robot’s loading mechanism is capable of loading five arrows at a time and loading them to the shooter efficiently. As for the team’s defence robot, with the innovative independent steering wheelbase, it can reach the defending zone in the shortest possible time. This helped the robot to gain full control of most of the pots, making the team winner of the Best Design Award in ABU Robocon 2021.

As for War Dragon’s robots, both are implemented with three shooters and a robust loading mechanism. With these designs, the robots have the ability of achieving Great Victory (a situation in which the game ends early when a team throws two arrows in its own pots twice at all of five scoring spots) in 20 seconds. Not only do the robots have great agility, but they also excel in accuracy.

As a part of the bigger HKUST Robotics team, the HKUST Robocon Team comprises 36 local and non-local undergraduates, who are mostly in their Year 1 or Year 2. A majority of the team come from the School of Engineering’s various programs and some are from the School of Science and Interdisciplinary Programs Office.

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This news was prepared with the help of Robocon team member CHAN Cheuk-Wai (Year 1, School of Engineering).