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Robots get their groove on
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CNTV, July 27, 2011
China's 13th National Robot Competition got underway in Mudanjiang of Heilongjiang Province on Sunday. University students from all around the country brought their android friends to participate in the competition. But many more people were there just to see the clever creations perform gymnastics and some stylish dance moves.
Your typical robot competition wouldn't be complete without robot football and some practical rescue operations. But at this year's competition, the bar was raised. New performances such as taekwondo and ballet have been added. Some participants even taught their robots how to do the exercises they had done in middle school.
These ballerinas performing "Swan Lake" are from a top-ranked university, Harbin Institute of Technology. According to their creators, one robot that is only 30 centimeters tall has 20 joints in its body. The creator says the team wants to give life to their robots by letting them dance like a real ballet dancer.
Wang Lei, student of Harbin Institute of Technology said, "Normally people use the word 'robotic' to name the style of body-popping dance, but we are doing it the opposite way, we want our robots to be graceful like human dancer."
The spectators can't get enough of the robots doing their dance moves, but only the technical team knows how difficult the preparation work is. Before the competition officially started, they spent hours to adjust the settings and modify the program. Because in some of the events, once the stopwatch ticks off, the competition must go on without any human guidance or control.
Liu Hong, tutor of Harbin Institute of Technology said, "It's a crowded environment, and the sensors in the robots are very sensitive to light and background noise. So it is indeed a big challenge for my students."
To end on Wednesday, the National Robot Competition is an effort to promote research in autonomous mobile robotics technology in a challenging structure. The competition provides students with hands-on engineering design challenges, and includes components of mechanical, computer, and control software and system integration.
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