Running Robots: China hosts first ever international autonomous robot games
Updated 22:02, 17-Aug-2019
The brain matters not just for human beings, but also for robots. And, for the very first time, China is hosting an international autonomous robot competition this weekend in Beijing. CGTN reporter Wang Mengzhen takes a closer look at how intelligent and flexible these creations can be.
In only eight minutes, these autonomous robots are asked to fulfill multiple tasks on the road as quickly as possible. This is part of the 2019 Running Robots Game in Beijing. Among the over thirty international teams, three are from the Republic of Korea. For Daeun and her teammates, bringing their robot to China is a new experience.
LEE DAEUN KOBOT TEAM, KOOKMIN UNIVERSITY "Our team won the first prize at a similar international game last year. Our strength is that we use Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) for image processing, which allows us to have optimized operation of images."
German student Jasper and his fellows are also invited to showcase their robotic soccer players during the competition. As members of the team "Hamburg Bit-Bots," they are frequent visitors of ROBO CUP— better known as the soccer World Cup in robotics. But, it still takes some time for these child-size humanoids to get used to the weather condition here.
WANG MENGZHEN BEIJING "This robot is named 'Rory.' The staff told me it weighs about eight kilograms, quite heavy."
The two-day games include both standard and freestyle competitions. But, it's not just a test of their skills, but also the installed chips and algorithms behind the robots. Professor Wang Zhihua is among the organizers who initiated the games.
PROFESSOR WANG ZHIHUA TSINGHUA UNIVERSITY "We hope to build a meaningful platform for global young people to dig deep in artificial intelligence and we've also arranged a 10 thousand US dollars prize for the winner. By doing so, we would like to develop both the software and hardware for these robots and gradually expand the application of AI into everyday life."
To add to all this, this self-driving bicycle equipped with the latest cutting-edge chip can follow you around on the sidelines of the games. This is also seen as a major breakthrough in AI technology by Chinese scientists. WMZ, CGTN, BEIJING.