THEY were turning them away from the door last month at the Big Pallet, a 10
000-seat stadium in the northern Japanese city of Koriyama, 200 kilometres north
of Tokyo. The attraction was not a sumo tournament, or a baseball game, but
RoboCon `99, a robot competition for students.
Among 20 teams in the running that night were 11 from Japan, eight from
other鈥攎ostly Asian鈥攃ountries and, representing Australia, four young
engineers from the University of Queensland鈥檚 MaD (Manufacturing and Design)
Laboratory. The contest was later broadcast by NHK, Japan鈥檚 equivalent of ABC
TV, to a prime-time audience estimated at more than 15 million viewers.
The MaD lads (and lass) did not win the competition. In fact, they were
knocked out in the first round鈥攐wn goals and penalties cost them dearly.
Nonetheless they returned to Brisbane well satisfied, having taken out two of the
eight awards on offer. The awards were for design and best new technology.
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The UQ team was led by Michael Lucas, a PhD student who this month was named
Young Professional Engineer of the Year by the Institution of Engineers,
Australia. The award recognises his skill as a designer of champion robots.
RoboCon, which has been going for about a decade, presents a different
challenge each year. In 1998 it was box stacking; in 2000, it will be rugby.
That should suit the Queenslanders, who have been invited back for next year鈥檚
competition.
This year鈥檚 challenge was to build soccer-playing robots. An unfortunate
choice perhaps, given the possibility of confusion between RoboCon and RoboCup.
The latter is another Japanese-inspired initiative, whose goal is also to build
soccer-playing robots (Australasian, 30 August 1997). But there are clear
differences between the two. RoboCon is based on mechanics, whereas RoboCup is
more electrical, being mainly to do with communications and software. Also
RoboCup robots are completely autonomous. They are remote controlled.
With RoboCon, the machines are semi-autonomous. Control is divided between a
computer on the machine and a human operator. According to Lucas, the
semi-autonomy and division of responsibility produces a better machine. Typical
applications for semi-autonomous robots include deep-sea exploration and mining.
But Lucas is more interested in applying his skills to a new and (certainly in
Australia) much faster growing field鈥攁nimatronic special effects. We鈥檙e
talking about the moving models you see in museums such as the dinosaurs and the
special effects in animal-based films like Babe.
Essentially lightweight aluminium cages on wheels, the Roobots gather a
soccer ball by gripping it between pneumatic clamps. The ball is raised 60
centimetres, then booted towards the goal by a piston-powered leg with a lump of
metal shaped like a foot on the end of it. The ball is 鈥渒icked鈥� at an angle of
45 degrees and at a speed of up to 9 metres a second. All the other teams used
electrically-driven wheels to pick up and kick. This was much less efficient than
the pneumatic based method, according to Lucas.
Rival universities were amazed that the Australians could do so much with so
little. 鈥淢ost of the others machines were very complex,鈥� said Lucas. 鈥淥urs were
simple but did exactly the same thing.鈥� The team that beat the Queenslanders,
Nagaoka University of Technology, was faster around the pitch. Lack of speed may
have been the main reason for the Australians limited success in the actual
competition, but they certainly won plaudits for design. When the event was
over, many of the other teams paid the Australian team the compliment of making
thorough videos of the Roobots.
Sponsors of the team included Rollerchair, an Adelaide-based maker of
wheelchairs which is interested in the technology for the production of
lightweight, easily controllable wheelchairs, and Festo, a multinational
pneumatics company based in Stuttgart, Germany. Festo is interested in
self-contained pneumatic systems, such as the one designed for the Roobot. The
machine is driven by small-sized tanks of compressed air. The compressors are
battery powered.
There鈥檚 always next year for the Queensland team. Go the
Wallabots! But how on Earth can a robot play rugby? We shall see.