NTU Student Teams Win 2015 National Robot Competition Top Prizes

The 2015 National Robot Competition concluded with teams from National Taiwan University taking home the top prizes for both the competition’s divisions in industrial robotics and creative application. The NTU teams were presented with awarding certificates as well as reward money from the competition’s governmental organizers, the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Economic Affairs.

The annual competition is hosted by the Industrial Investment Bureau of the MOEA as part of the government’s efforts to promote such industries as robotics, big data, and the Internet of Things (IoT). Open to student teams across the nation, the event serves as a platform for students to translate their knowledge into substantive creations while also exposing the young competitors to the workforce and various academic-industry cooperation opportunities at an early stage.

This year’s competition placed particular emphasis on the robot’s design, development, and utilization of domestic components. Such attention was established to enhance the development and competitiveness of Taiwan’s domestic key component production. The competing robots were then judged by professional experts as well as renowned scholars on their creativity, practicality, and feasibility when utilized in a production line.

The first of the two divisions, domestic industrial robots, evaluated the use of domestic key components in Selective Compliance Assembly Robot Arm (SCARA) designs. The SCARA robots’ were also evaluated for their positioning accuracy, repeatability, cycle time, as well as actual operation capabilities.

Meanwhile, the robotics intelligence and creative application division aimed to address the current difficulties faced by the industry, and competing teams were given the freedom to enter designs of various applications and fields. The entries were exhibited in a dynamic display and judged according to their comprehensive intelligence system (i.e. vision, sensory… etc.) as well as overall achievability to be implemented for real production.

The two NTU teams, both of which advised by Prof. Ren C. Luo (羅仁權) of the International Center of Excellence in Intelligent Robotics and Automation Research, stood out among multiple stones of team from across the nation in winning the top prizes for the two divisions.