Tokyo Institute of Technology Team Maquinista Wins Special Award at 2024 NHK Student Robot Contest
Team Maquinista from Tokyo Tech’s Society for the Study of Robotics — one of the Institute’s official student clubs — has won the Mabuchi Motor Co., Ltd. Special Award for their unique robot design at the 2024 NHK Student Robot Contest, held on June 9. This year’s contest, joined by 18 teams, was cosponsored by NHK and NHK Enterprises, Inc.
The NHK Student Robot Contest was first held in 1991 and has functioned as the national qualification round for the ABU Asia-Pacific Robot Contest since 2002.
Each year, the theme of the Asia-Pacific contest changes depending on the host nation. The theme for the 2024 contest, which will be held in Ha Long, Vietnam in August, is “Harvest Day.” The name reflects the planting and harvesting of rice in the iconic terraced paddies of Vietnam.
This year, participating teams must use two robots to conduct tasks in a field divided into three areas. In Area 1, they first perform a task called “plant,” in which they retrieve seedling vases placed on a rack, and then carry and place them in a predetermined position in the Planting Zone. In Area 2 during the “harvest” task, the teams must pick up different colored balls from the Harvesting Zone and throw them into Area 3. In Area 3, the teams attempt to collect their team balls and place them in vertical silos in the Silo Zone. Teams earn points from each of these tasks, and the team with the most points after three minutes wins the match. However, if a team fills three of the five silos with at least two of their balls and with their team ball at the top of each silo, they immediately achieve gold, or mua vang in Vietnamese, and win the game.
To make things more challenging, teams had to build both of their robots according to strict size, weight, and safety regulations, and Area 3 could only be accessed by the second robot, which had to be fully automated.
Team Maquinista’s first qualifying match was against the team that finished second in this year’s NHK Student Robot Contest. Although robots Kusaka and Fushimi both worked well, Team Maquinista lost the match. The team won their second qualifier despite some issues with the movement of one of their robots. The result of the qualifying round was one win and one loss, which did not secure a place in the final round for the Tokyo Tech team.
In recent years, with the development of electronic control technology, many teams in this contest have simplified their mechanism and mounted multiple actuators on their robot. Team Maquinista’s Kusaka, however, was equipped with multiple cam mechanisms to generate complex movements and enable fine motion that is difficult to achieve with electronic control. The team was also able to decrease the number of actuators to reduce the weight of their robot.
None of the other teams opted for this kind of solution, and Team Maquinista’s efforts earned them the Mabuchi Motor Co., Ltd. Special Award for “combining the best of both control and machinery without relying entirely on electronic control.”