Research team has 'wright stuff' in technology race

The ultimate goal of the WrightEagle, the robot research team of the University of Science and Technology of China, is as always not merely to win the championship in the world's top robot competition, but also to initiate a more ambitious journey toward the industrialization of intelligent service robots.

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"Before we start the industrialization, we should first win a world championship, in order to check whether our technology is the best and to know how we can make it better," said Chen Xiaoping, a computer science professor at USTC and team leader of the WrightEagle.

The team made it. With its self-designed robots - dubbed Kejia - the WrightEagle recently won the first place for the first time in the RoboCup@Home league, one of several leagues at the 2014 RoboCup, officially known as the Robot World Cup Initiative, which concluded on July 25 in Joao Pessoa, Brazil.

The competition consisted of a set of benchmark tests, used to evaluate a robot's abilities in a realistic, nonstandardized home environment, and a task designed by each team in the final section.

The @Home is a new league in the RoboCup that aims to foster the development of applications in the domains of service and assistance robotics, ambient intelligence and human-robot interactions, according to RoboCup's website.

The WrightEagle team is an emerging star in the @Home league but a traditional power in the 2D Simulation League, in which two teams play soccer in a two-dimensional virtual stadium with autonomous software programs.

"As the first league set up in RoboCup, the 2D Simulation League saw the fiercest competition, as all the other teams regarded us as their primary and common competitor," said Chen, whose team has taken first and second places on five occasions in the past 10 years.

The team's goal is "to defend the championship in the 2D Simulation League and secure a new one in the @Home league," he said.

It was not an easy task. As soon as the team arrived at Joao Pessoa, Chen and his team members were informed by the RoboCup Federation of changes in the rules, which were quite disadvantageous to the WrightEagle.

"We were the last to know of the changes, which were apparently made to restrict our performance in order to give other teams more opportunities," said Chen.

He was slightly angry with the arrangements but also understood the purpose behind them - to maintain the enthusiasm of other competitors.

"As the ultimate purpose of the RoboCup is to promote robot research and not merely to award prizes, we agreed to adopt the new rules."

Zhang Haochong, a student member of the WrightEagle who has been working with the robot team for six years, said: "We are prepared to face every emerging situation."