The Robocon team formed by engineering and science students from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) represented Hong Kong to compete in ABU Asia-Pacific Robot Contest on 18 Aug 2013 and won the Best Engineering Award.

This year, Vietnam is the host of the contest which attracted a total of 19 teams from 18 countries and regions. The theme of the contest “The Green Planet” was set with the message: “Each nation is a piece of the puzzle that forms the world; the responsibility to protect the earth thus lies on the shoulder of each person living on it. Awareness and actions - that is what we need to sustain life in our common home THE EARTH”.

HKUST's team was formed by 27 students from School of Engineering & 2 students from School of Science. The team had earlier formed into 2 teams and won the Championship, First Runner-up, Best Engineering Award, and Best Artistic Design Award in the Robocon 2013 Hong Kong Contest in June competing against teams from other local universities and institutes. HKUST’s team earned the right to represent Hong Kong to participate in the ABU Asia-Pacific Robot Contest in Vietnam.

The Best Engineering Award in the ABU Asia-Pacific Robot Contest was presented to the team that demonstrated the most excellent engineering in terms of structure of machines and strategy. HKUST’s two robots were carefully designed to achieve the highest stability. The automatic robot has a panel for game field members to switch to different path options during the game, making it flexible to encounter different situations in the competition. The manual robot is able to store three buds (props for shooting to a platform to win the game) at the same time, making it fast to reload and shoot again if the first bud launch is failed.

The team was supervised by Prof Tim Woo, Director of the Center for Global & Community Engagement (GCE) and Associate Professor of Engineering Education. Prof Woo said, “The student team impressively completed all the tasks in all matches in Preliminary Round, and entered Final Round Tournament together with 7 teams. Our team performed well despite keen competition with the champion team of Japan in the quarter-final. We are very proud that the students won the Best Engineering Award for the first time.”

The ABU Asia-Pacific Robot Contest is an annual Asian Oceanian College robot competition founded by Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union. The contest aims to advance engineering and computing technologies in the region, strengthen exchanges and create friendship among young people with similar interests. Other participating teams are from Japan, Thailand, Indonesia, Republic of Korea, Vietnam etc.

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Related Link:

• HKUST Receives Four Awards in Robocon for Second Consecutive Year
• Danang-Vietnam ABU Asia-Pacific Robot Contest 2013