IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - September 2017 - 16

Figure 1. The finalist teams of the DJI RMMC.

mobile manipulator developed by each
team was required to meet weight and
size specifications.
Launched in December 2016, the
RMMC received 40 entries from around
the world. Based on the merits of the
technical proposals submitted by the
teams, 13 finalist teams from six countries were shortlisted to participate in the
challenge at ICRA 2017 (Figure 1). Each
team could opt to use its own mobile
platform (subject to the weight and size
requirements) or the RoboMaster platform that was provided to the team. The
teams submitted a progress report in
April 2017 to ensure that their progress
was on track, and the teams who
showed good progress were eligible to
receive travel sponsorship from DJI.
Over the two days of the RMMC
at the ICRA 2017, each team performed

three attempts to achieve the tallest
stack in the shortest time (Figure 2).
The scores for all of the attempts were
then aggregated, and the winners
were determined. The champion, and
also the winner of the Outstanding
Performance Award, was Team T-DT
from Northeastern University, China.
The team won the US$20,000 cash
prize, and each team member received a DJI Phantom 4 Pro drone.
The other winners were Team Duxing (runner-up) from Xi'an Jiaotong
University, China, and Team RobotPilots (third place) from Shenzhen
University, China, and they returned
home with cool drones and gadgets
from DJI.
The RMMC was an exciting showcase of technology, engineering, and
innovation coming together to solve

Figure 2. A robot attempts to pile a stack of blocks on top of another in the race to
achieve the tallest assembly.

IEEE ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION MAGAZINE

SEPTEMBER 2017

a particular mobile manipulation
problem. It fulfilled its goal as an
educational robotics competition to
encourage student participation in
robotics, foster robotics research, and
attract public interest in robotics. Its
competitive nature pushes students
to develop autonomous systems that
have fast speed and reaction ability.
Future editions of the main RoboMaster competition may see the addition of engineering robots with
mobile manipulation capabilities to
further push the limits and challenge
the contestants.
-Shuo Yang and Chunshao Xu
The 2017 Mobile Microrobotics
Challenge
Since its inception in 2010, MMC has
been held at the IEEE ICRA every year,
and it involves microrobots that must fit
within a 500- nm-diameter sphere or,
roughly, the diameter of a human hair.
The microrobots for this competition
operate in a controlled setup under a
microscope and are actuated using advanced control systems.
MMC 2017 challenged teams to
face off in tests of autonomy, accuracy,
and assembly. The competing teams
were required to furnish their own
microrobots and microarenas as well
as equipment for powering, operating,
and controlling the microrobotic devices. The detailed specifications on
the requirements for the microrobots
and the microarenas were provided in

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - September 2017