Organizing Comittee of the Competition
On August 17th, the University of Hong Kong, Intel China and CETIC jointly organised the AI Everywhere Robotics Esports Invitational 2024 competition, with CDNIS as a sponsor of the event. The competition hosted 19 teams from secondary schools in Hong Kong, with one team traveling from Vietnam to participate. The competition was divided into three categories: sea, land, and air; each category featured a major tournament, including the “Underwater Robot Sumo Tournament,” the “Robot 3×3 Rugby Tournament,” and the “Drone Dance Competition.” CDNIS had 2 student teams take part in the competition and the Insight team had a chance to interview several student participants and Ms Fung, the school’s robotics and coding teacher.
To prepare for the tournament, teams from CDNIS built robots that showcased outstanding creativity and innovation. Though, it is important to recognise that the build up to their success took a lot of hard work and much skill. In an interview with several CDNIS participants, many agreed that the main factors that contributed to their victories were consistent communication and excellent sportsmanship. Lucas Wong(7B), a group leader in the competition, noticed that he and his teammates were almost always talking to each other throughout the events, and it was “rare” to see them quiet; for instance, they created coordinated with 3 robots in their rugby tournament by devising plans as a team to score more effectively.
Leonardo Liu’s (7E) view of their teamwork aligned with Lucas’; he always saw them “cheering each other on.” Despite the major success that our 2 CDNIS teams achieved, they still demonstrated utmost respect to the efforts and achievements of other teams, with Andy Ji (7E) stating that the students “shook hands with the other teams when done with the [matches].”
However, the competition was not without its challenges. When asked about what obstacles they had to overcome, the participants expressed some difficulties with executing the plans they had going into the competition. Aiden Choy (7E) noted that in the middle of the tournament, “when [their robots] made con- tact with another robot, the screws came off.” Ms Fung stated that luckily “[they had] a few spare robots and [their] team members…acted quickly to switch to other robots,” which let them catch up in the end. As for the rugby tournament, the CDNIS teams’ offensive strategies were already well thought out and well implemented; Ms Fung remarked that they “prepared a speedy robot for the competition” beforehand. But, their defensive strategies were weaker, so they “analyzed the other teams’ designs that performed well in defending” and implemented those aspects in their own robots “to improve [their performance.”
Despite all the challenges that the students from CDNIS faced, their resilience and adaptive strategy was truly admirable, and they achieved 1st place in the Drone Dance Competition and the Robot 3×3 Rugby Tournament, as well as 1st runner-up in the Underwater Robot Sumo Tour- nament; our Head of School Dr Kaiser presented the awards to the winning teams, making the moment even more memorable. Hoping to further improve for the next competition, students are already working on their new robots and eager to win future competitions. Even beyond the competition itself, Ms Fung was thrilled to see that “[the students] grew and improved at the end of the competition by having the opportunity to meet and compete with students with like-minded talent and interests.” This experience was one that all partici- pants deeply enjoyed and learned a lot from, and we know they will continue to excel in the next competitions!