The four NJU teams of about 20 students won one first prize, one second prize and two third prizes in the robot golf and robot relay races during the 2017 “SoftBank Robot Cup” China Robot Skills Competition, an event held in Nanjing between December 8 and 10 and hosted by Chinese Association for Artificial Intelligence.

The NJU students came from School of Software Engineering, School of Physics, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, School of Management and Engineering, and School of Earth Sciences and Engineering, and they were led by Chen Lei, the entrepreneurship mentor, and Zhang Jianbing, Huang Shujian, and Xu Jian, teachers from Department of Computer Science and Technology.

The two-day competition included nine competition events such as robot assembly, robot palletizing, robot jigsaw, and robot dancing, which not only tested the participants’ programming ability, but also placed greater demands on their adaptive capacity.

The competition attracted more than 160 teams from 52 universities and colleges from all over China, including Xi'an Jiaotong University, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Nanjing University, Southeast University, and Nanjing University of Science and Technology.

Eventually, NJU’s Thunder & Ice Team and Tiger Woods Team won the first and second prizes, respectively, in the robot golf race, while the Thor Team and Whale Team won the third prize in the robot relay race.

The student teams were trained and prepared by the robot laboratory of “The Star of Scientific and Technological Innovation” College Student Makerspace, which is one of the key projects of Nanjing University’s National Innovation and Entrepreneurship Demonstration Base.

The first-stage construction of this demonstration base Makerspace covers a floor space of about 3000 square meters and has many specialized lab and workshop rooms such as the “road show hall,” “3D printing studio,” “robot laboratory,” “pottery studio,” “holographic laboratory,” and “dynamic storehouse,” which are open to all teachers, students, and alumni.

The Makerspace regularly sets up innovation and entrepreneurship courses, workshops, salons and other kinds of training. It is regarded as a “paradise” where students of different disciplines can exchange their experience of innovation and entrepreneurship and put their ideas to practice.

The robot laboratory was established jointly by the university and enterprises and is a place where enterprise mentors and NJU teachers instruct students in carrying out innovative practices.

Competitors debug the robots

The robot relay race

The robot golf race

NJU competitors