Beijing 2016 – World Robot Contest

This post is written by Katie about the World Robot Contest that she attended as part of UT Austin Villa with her teammates Josh and Josiah.

The World Robot Contest at the World Robot Conference ended up being a fun and interesting experience, both culturally and scientifically. Since Josiah, Josh and I were aiming for good enough – not perfect – performance, the 8am to 5pm venue hours were not bad – and allowed us plenty of time to connect with teams over dinner each evening while still getting plenty of sleep.

Despite adopting a relaxed attitude about this competition, we ended up claiming 1st place in both the orange ball competition and the black and white ball competition!  Surprisingly, this win ended up getting much more media attention that our second place finish at RoboCup 2016 or even our first place finish at RoboCup 2012.

Following are pictures to summarize our experience.

My room at JI Hotel Beijing Yizhuang Development Zone Branch
Delicious milk tea carried me through the days of tuning and coding
We bought a large pack of beers from the grocery store to take to the venue and share with the Australian team (UNSW).  Josiah was kind enough to carry them on the metro.
Kenji from UNSW gave a nice welcome speech on behalf of the foreign teams (us and UNSW). He started by introducing himself in Mandarin, which was a huge hit with the crowd.
An early orange ball game.  UT Austin Villa is in white.
One of our black and white ball games. UT Austin Villa is in white.
The World Robot Conference was huge. This was the courtyard area outside the autonomous cars area.
A later orange ball game.  Notice the larger crowd that appeared on the weekend!
UT Austin Villa robot team
There were some crazy exhibits at the World Robot Conference
The clothing were rotating automatically while the robot in the blue dress played violin.
The entrance to the World Robot Conference grounds had nice shrubbery and a robot statue.
Josh called these jackets the motorbike people would wear ‘snuggies’, and the name stuck.  They only had material on the front.

We shared a table with the other foreign team, UNSW. They became quick friends with TJArk as well.
There was a robot fish booth at the World Robot Conference.
We found the exhibit that seemed to contain SoftBank NAO knock-offs rather creepy.
Josiah was interviewed by a guy reporting for Reuters before our championship game against UNSW.
A kick-off during our orange ball championship game against UNSW.
Josh, me, and Josiah after claiming the orange ball championship.

Leave a Reply