Special award for Team Maquinista at 2023 NHK Student Robot Contest despite difficulties

Team Maquinista from Tokyo Tech's Society for the Study of Robotics — one of the Institute's official student clubs — has won the Mabuchi Motor Co., Ltd. Special Award for their unique roller design at the 2023 NHK Student Robot Contest, held on June 4. This year's contest, joined by 22 teams, was cosponsored by NHK and NHK Enterprises, Inc.

The NHK Student Robot Contest was first held in 1991 and has functioned as the national qualification round for the ABU Asia-Pacific Robot Contest since 2002.

Each year, the theme of the Asia-Pacific contest changes depending on the host nation. The theme for the 2023 contest, which will be held in Phnom Penh, Cambodia in August, is "Casting Flowers over Angkor Wat."

Teams use two robots — each of which must be built according to strict rules regarding factors such as size, weight, and safety — to throw rings onto 11 poles spread around the arena. The robots have three minutes to collaborate and pick up their team rings, and then throw launch into the air and onto the poles. Teams score points for each pole that has their team's ring at the top. The team with the most total points is the winner. However, if a team manages to throw their rings on top of eight designated poles, they immediately win by achieving chey-yo, meaning "cold game" in Khmer.

In the first qualifying match, Team Maquinista's robots did not start working when the match commenced, allowing the opposing team to score the first points. However, the Tokyo Tech team quickly recovered and came from behind to win the match. In the second qualifier, one of the robots again refused to work properly. The opponent increased their lead and eventually won the match. As a result, Team Maquinista won one game and lost one game in the preliminary league, meaning they will not compete in the national finals or in Phnom Penh.

Many of the competing teams, including Team Maquinista, used a mechanism in which the rings are held from above and below by rollers and ejected using a rotating motor. Typical rollers used in this mechanism are cylindrical, but Tokyo Tech's participants developed and incorporated into their robot unique tapered rollers* which they called "carrot rollers." For this creation, Team Maquinista received a special award from Mabuchi Motor Co., Ltd.