HKUST Robocon Team Won Seven Awards in Robocon Hong Kong Contest 2024

HKUST won seven awards in Robocon Hong Kong Contest 2024, the highest number among all participating institutions. [Download Photo]

Two sub-teams (War Dragon and Fiery Dragon) of the HKUST Robocon Team won a total of seven awards in the Robocon Hong Kong Contest 2024 on June 23, competing against teams from seven other universities and higher education institutions. War Dragon finished as the Second Runner-Up and received the Best Team Spirit Award, while Fiery Dragon claimed the Best Engineering Award, Best Institute Entity Award, and Innovative Strategy Award. The team leaders of War Drgaon (LO Man-Cheuk) and Fiery Dragon (SHEK Ching-Yee) both gained the Key Influencer Award as well.

The competition theme, “Harvest Day”, pays homage to farming in the mountain ranges of Vietnam. Teams were tasked with building two robots—one manual and one fully automatic. These robots collaborated to pick up seedlings and transport two rows of balls to designated scoring locations.

War Dragon’s manual robot was designed with a focus on mobility, featuring an elevated platform that allowed it to move over the two rows of balls unobstructed, as well as a single flywheel shooter to shoot the balls to the designated area. Fiery Dragon, on the other hand, used two flywheel shooters to minimize robot movement by having one shooter for each row of balls. Both designs achieved some of the best times in the competition.

For the fully automatic robot, both sub-teams implemented defense mechanisms to ensure unobstructed ball placement in the appropriate silos. War Dragon used multiple rollers to sort larger numbers of balls quickly, while Fiery Dragon opted for a triple suction arm system to pick up balls faster.

One major challenge to the students was ensuring the fully automatic robot collected and placed colored balls accurately. To address this, they experimented with a machine learning model to locate and recognize the balls from the data of a camera fixed on the robot, enabling the robot to be at the correct position to pick up the balls. This method was critical to the success of the robot in the competition.

This year’s event is a showcase of the HKUST Robocon Team’s dedication to learning, improvement, and innovation. The team looks forward to participating and shining in the competition again next year.

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(The HKUST Robocon Team assisted in the preparation of this news.)