HKUST Won 15 Medals in RoboGames 2024 – One of the World’s Largest Robot Competitions
Fifteen students from the HKUST Robotics Team and the HKUST STEAM Tutor Team brought home 15 medals – nine gold, three silver and three bronze – in RoboGames 2024, held in California, United States on April 19-21, 2024. This is the second time for HKUST students to participate in the RoboGames, also known as the Olympics of Robots and one of the world’s largest robot competitions. Their results have improved significantly this year by winning 15 medals from 11 events, an impressive jump of eight medals from five events last year.
Started in 2004 and ran for 16 editions, RoboGames is an annual robot contest in California that draws contestants from all over the world to compete in wide-ranging events. The 2024 edition witnessed the involvement of 541 entries competing in 55 events. Participating teams came from diverse countries and regions, including Canada, Egypt, Germany, India, Japan, Mainland China, Mexico, United Kingdom and United States.
HKUST students participated in 14 events and collected medals in 11 of them (see table below), against competition from robotics teams all around the world. The students were supervised by Prof. Tim WOO, Director of Center for Global & Community Engagement, School of Engineering.
HKUST’s Medal Count in RoboGames 2024
| Event | Gold | Silver | Bronze |
| Sumo (3kg Remote Control) | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Humanoid – Freestyle (Kit) | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Walker Challenge | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Art Bots – Painting | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Auto Humanoid – Lift and Carry | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Balancer Race (Auto) | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Balancer Race (Remote Control) | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Beam Speeder | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| NatCar | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Auto Humanoid – Obstacle Run | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| Auto Humanoid – Dash | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Total | 9 | 3 | 3 |
Hailing from various disciplines, the 15 HKUST students effectively applied what they learned in their disciplines and contributed to the team. They collaborated on the construction of the robots over several months by engaging in tasks such as mechanical design, electronic circuit design, and algorithm design.
“The competition provided networking opportunities, allowing me to engage in discussions with fellow participants and organizers, broadening my horizons and inspiring new ideas. As the leader of a five-people sub-team, I learned to foster a collaborative environment and practised my communication and delegation skills. Overall, this competition improved my technical expertise, problem-solving abilities, networking skills, and leadership skills that will contribute to my success as an engineer,” said YIP Tsz-Chun (Year 3, BEng in Mechanical Engineering) from the Robotics Team.
This year was also the first time for the STEAM Tutor Team to join the contest. “I am grateful for the opportunity to take part in Robogames 2024 where I participated in the Art Bots – Painting event. This was my first time representing HKUST in an overseas competition. The whole process was quite fun and we even found out some unexpected great combinations of materials. Seeing the participants take their unique drawings excitedly that were created by our Art Bot, it made me feel all our efforts were worth it. Overall, it was a fruitful experience for me to explore the area of robotics and my own interest. It was definitely an interesting and beneficial event to participate in,” said STEAM tutor HON Nga-Yin (Year 4, BEng in Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management).
Heartfelt thanks go to Chinachem Group for supporting the students to attend the competition overseas, and to RS Components for sponsoring the electronic components and Milwaukee for the equipment.
Annex: Student List and Event Summary
Related link:
About The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) (https://hkust.edu.hk/) is a world-class research intensive university that focuses on science, technology and business as well as humanities and social science. HKUST offers an international campus, and a holistic and interdisciplinary pedagogy to nurture well-rounded graduates with global vision, a strong entrepreneurial spirit and innovative thinking. Over 80% of our research work were rated “Internationally excellent” or “world leading” in the Research Assessment Exercise 2020 of Hong Kong’s University Grants Committee. We were ranked 3rd in Times Higher Education’s Young University Rankings 2022, and our graduates were ranked 23rd worldwide and among the best from universities from Asia in Global Employability University Ranking and Survey 2021.
