Skip to navigation | Skip to content

Robotic bilbies to represent Australia


University of Queensland Mechanical Engineering students Anthony Reid and Rebecca Hill with their robotic bilbies.

A team of robotic bilbies and numbats are set to represent Australia in a life-sized game of noughts and cross to take place in Japan next month.

Fifteen University of Queensland robotics undergraduates have been invited to compete against entrants from Japan, China, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines and France in the Robocon 2001 Annual Asian Robotics Championship to be held on March 4.

While some countries, such as Thailand, have spent fortunes in the region of $500,000 on their robotic entries, the Australian team is banking on Australian ingenuity to win the day.

"We're working within a budget of $25,000 which has been largely eaten up by the airfares, so we've had to scrounge bits from here and there to actually make the robots," team leader Matthew Grant said.

The tactical game which is called 'Bingo' in Japan, involves two teams competing to place objects representing noughts and crosses on a 15 square metre board. The first team to score three noughts or crosses in a row wins.

The students have built eleven small robots which they have dubbed bilbies and numbats, and two larger robots, only one of which is permitted to be manually controlled.

The robots navigate by following lines on the board and recognising intersections. Each has been designated its own section of the board.

According to Mr Grant, the team's strategy is to have lots of robots each with their own specific task instead of just one multi-skilled robot. They aim to win the game in the first 30 seconds by occupying 3 squares in a row however they do have a contingency plan.

"If we can get our robots to do their job then sit on one of the intersections it will make it difficult for other robots to get around," he said.

This is important not only to block the other team's robots from getting to empty squares, but also to protect the squares that they've already claimed. This particular version of the game allows opponents to remove noughts and crosses!

The smaller robots will deposit witches hats to the eight outer squares using conveyor belts on their tops. The manually controlled robot will work from the side with a long arm, and the other larger robot will be responsible for carrying a large cylinder with a map of Australia on top of it to the strategically important raised centre square.

This is the fourth time a University of Queensland student team has been invited to participate in the event, with previous teams building robots to play baseball, soccer and basketball.

The championships will be conducted in front of a 10,000-strong audience and televised live by Japanese broadcaster NHK to an estimated audience of 30 million.