The 20th China University Robot Competition (ROBOCON) was held at International Exhibition and Convention Center in Zoucheng, Shandong Province, a total of 79 schools participated in the competition. USTB’s MEI Robotics Team won the second place in the “Throwing Arrows into Pots” competition, as well as the first prize in the “Machine Equestrian Skills” competition. Due to the excellent performance of Team USTB in the “Throwing Arrows into Pots”, the MEI Robotics Team will represent China to participate in the Asia-pacific Broadcasting Union ROBOCON (ABU ROBOCON) competition in December.

As the host country of the ABU ROBOCON in 2021, China has chosen the “Throwing Arrows into Pots”, a traditional Chinese etiquette and game as the theme for ROBOCON. In the competition, each teams has to build two robots, one is an offensive arrow-throwing robot for score, and another defensive robot to turn the target pot or intercept flying arrows, two teams will engage in confrontation on court. The team that scores the highest score or the first to achieve the “Total Victory” in the rules wins the match.

After about 10 months of design, production, debugging and preparation, USTB’s MEI team overcame many difficulties and arrived in Zoucheng on July 13 for the final competition preparation. This time MEI’s offensive robot was named "Thunder", meaning fast, accurate, and fierce, arrows hitting targets like lightning and thunder. The name of the defensive robot is “Goblet”, which comes from CAO Pi’s verse, which means to drink together and share the time.

On July 27, after the opening of the competition, all MEI team members went to Zoucheng International Exhibition and Convention Center on July 28 for robot test-run and warm-up matches. MEI entered the group competition with the 5th overall score in the 32 groups tournament, and then entered the top 16 as the first place in the group and eliminated Wenzhou Polytechnic, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, and Beihang University in the elimination tournament. In the final, USTB lost to Wuhan University and won the second place. The “Machine Equestrian Skills” competition is a point race, the MEI team played well and won the first prize in the competition. In addition, as a school that has participated for 20 consecutive years from the beginning of the competition to the present, our school won the 20th anniversary participation award.

The excellent performance of the USTB MEI robotics team and the cheering of the rest of the players won the attention and interviews of media such as Xinhua News Agency and Shandong TV. CCTV also broadcasted the competition in the news on July 31.

The next phase of the MEI’s goal is to prepare for the ABU ROBOCON to be held at the end of this year. The team members are highly motivated to strive for excellence, looking forward to adding luster to the team, to the school and to the nation.