UQ robots tackle noughts and crosses in Japan

Seven UQ students and 13 tic-tac-toe playing robots will represent Australia at one of the world's major robotic championships in Japan on March 4.

The Robocon 2001 Annual Asian Robotics Championship showcases the engineering skills of undergraduate students specialising in robotics.

UQ team manager Matthew Grant said UQ students comprised the only Australian team in the invitation-only event, competing against entrants from Japan, China, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines and France.

This is the fourth time a UQ student team has been invited to participate in the event, with previous teams building robots to play baseball, soccer and basketball.

The championships will be conducted in front of a 10,000-strong audience and televised live by Japanese broadcaster NHK to an estimated audience of 30 million. While some countries, such as Thailand, have spent fortunes in the region of $500,000 on their robotic entries, the Australian team is banking on Australian ingenuity to win the day.

"We're working within a budget of $25,000 which has been largely eaten up by the airfares, so we've had to scrounge bits from here and there to actually make the robots," Mr Grant said.

"Ours is a student led-entry. We're competing because it's a great opportunity to learn every stage of managing a project from finding sponsors to designing and building machines. And of course, it's also fun.

"It's not counted as credit for our courses but it's a very practical way to apply the knowledge we've learned at UQ."

Fifteen undergraduate Mechanical and Electrical Engineering students have built the UQ robots, which will play opposition teams in a tactical game on a 15 square metre board. Eleven smaller robots will play in the centre of the board, assisted by two larger robots, only one of which is permitted to be manually controlled. The first team to score three noughts or crosses in a row wins.

The sole manual robot, which has an extendable arm to reach into the centre of the board, while working outside the inner square, has been christened Russell in honour of sponsor Russell Mineral Equipment of Toowoomba. Other team sponsors are The University of Queensland and UQ's technology transfer company, UniQuest Pty Ltd.

Mr Grant said the team overcame many difficulties in the design process to arrive at some "extremely innovative solutions". The students gave up their evenings and weekends to work on the robots during the crucial construction phase, balancing the load with work experience and other commitments.

The students previewed their robots in Brisbane today, and leave for Japan on March 1.

For more information, contact team leader Matthew Grant, telephone 0417 008 611 or Jan King at UQ Communications telephone 0413 601 248, or email: communications@mailbox.uq.edu.au.