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Robot contest winners have no time for dating

02/09/2010  (Liberty Times)

The "IRALAB" team, which is composed of six undergraduate and graduate students from National Taiwan University's Department of Electrical Engineering, won the top prize and NT$400,000 in the category of robots playing basketball.

They said that the development process was exhausting, and the time-consuming work almost cost a team member his girlfriend. Other members also considered not having any time to find girlfriends the biggest sacrifice they made during the process.

Their design, the "Renball" robot, which consists of electrical distance measurement and camera technology, is able to accurately catch a basketball and then pass it to a human teammate on hand, making itself an wonderful point guard for the basketball team.

IRALAB captain Lin Zi-da, a graduate student from the university's Department of Electrical Engineering, pointed out that Renball is a stable and precise basketball robot in that it utilizes electrical distance measurement technology, which takes the place of ultrasound, to better its performance in retrieving the basketball. The added cameras let the robots pass the balls to human players who are behind them.

How does the team plan on using the NT$400,000? The six students said, "The prize money will be used to develop a new generation of robots," adding that the NT$70,000 Renball still needs to be refined further in the areas of getting out of the way of the ball, catching the ball and passing the ball to moving teammates. In the future, hopefully the robots will be good enough to become practice companions on the basketball court. Combined with a remote control function, the robot will also be able to be used to retrieve the basketball.

(The Chinese version of this article was published on February 8, 2010.)