RoboMaster () is an annual intercollegiate robot competition held in Shenzhen, Guangdong, China. First started in 2015, it is the brainchild of DJI's founder and CEO Frank Wang, and jointly sponsored by the Communist Youth League Central Committee, the All-China Students' Federation (ACSF) and the Shenzhen City Government. It is the first shooting sport-style robotics competition in China.
RoboMaster is one of the four major robotics competitions under the China University Robot Competition () banner, along with Robocon, ROBOTAC and the Robot Start-ups Competition. It currently includes four sub-competitions — the RoboMaster Robotics Competition, the RoboMaster Technical Challenge, the ICRA RoboMaster AI Challenge, and the new RoboMaster Youth Tournament.
History The competition's idea began in 2013 as a small-scale internal competition held inside DJI's headquarter office with a makeshift racecourse, a chance for engineers to blow off steam while still working on technology core to the company business. It later integrated with a summer camp for university students, with only 24 participants, who were tasked to achieve autonomous moving target shooting using computer vision. In 2014, this summer camp grew to 100 students, who were challenged to improve and upgrade prior technical designs via a series of 4-on-4 robot shooting matches. This was the foundation of the later RoboMaster competition.
In 2015, Robomasters was first launched as a robotics competition. This competition introduced a confrontational 5-on-5 MOBA-style robot combat to the world for the first time, and over 3,000 university students all over Mainland China participated. In 2016, in order to improve the technical quality and competition experience, the organizing committee developed a new-generation robot referee system, and required each teams to have 6 units featuring 1 Hero, 3 Standard, 1 Base and 1 Aerial robots in their lineup in the 2nd Robomasters competition. This is also the first year Robomasters included teams from outside Mainland China, with universities from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan participating.
On September 29, 2017, the competition was officially renamed to RoboMaster, upgraded to 7 robots per team, and developed into a competition that demands the comprehensive skills involving all science and engineering disciplines. In addition, RoboMaster also added the Technical Challenge series, and co-hosted with the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) the first IRCA AI Challenge in Singapore.
In 2018, the 4th RoboMaster Robotics Competition added extra technical requirements for features such as the loading and launching mechanism requirements for Sentry and Aerial robots, and focused heavily on training practical engineering personnels, attracting nearly 200 global teams. In the same year, DJI held the 2nd ICRA AI Challenge in Australia, focusing on robotics academic research.
In 2019, the RoboMaster competition sports a total prize pool of 3,750,000 RMB (US$600,000), with 500,000 RMB (US$75,000) for the winning team. In addition to the prize money, winners can achieve celebrity status among the 6 million fans who watch livestream online. According to DJI's CEO Frank Wang, RoboMaster is his passion project for engineers "to have a stage, a competition, to become loved by lots of people, to show their wisdom, show their precision", and the tournament was designed to "make superstars out of nerdy college students", and in doing so, boost interest in the field of robotic engineering. By sponsoring a popular competition, DJI can also set itself up to be the default industrial platform, as almost every major robotics program at Chinese universities now use DJI's infrastructure.
The 2020 competition was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021, while competitions were also impacted by the pandemic, some did occur across China, in addition to the first North American RoboMaster University League competition held at the Texas A&M University campus in College Station, Texas. The North American competition included 1v1 and 3v3 events. A union team of RoboX from Pennsylvania State University and Telpochcalli of Tecnológico de Monterrey was named champions of the 2021 1v1 North American competition, and ARUW from the University of Washington was champion of the 2021 3v3 North American competition.
Competitions RoboMaster Robotics Competition
The RoboMaster Robotics Competition (, "RoboMaster confrontational competition"), also called the RoboMaster FPS Competition in English, is RoboMaster's main event robot combat tournament, reported to be "the world's biggest, most complex and completely over-the-top student robotics competition" by The Verge, and has attracted the interest of hundreds of colleges/universities, nearly 1,000 tech companies/organizations and tens of thousands of robotics enthusiasts around the world. Unlike the Western gladiator-style single/battle royal melee seen in Robot Wars or BattleBots, the RoboMaster battles focus primarily on ranged attacks, featuring two opposing teams (red vs. blue) of rover-like robotic UGVs (initially 5 units, increased to 7 units including a UAV in later years) engaged in co-op skirmish battles similar to a multiplayer first-person shooter (FPS) video game. The competition is held in an innovative e-sports match presentation aimed to create spectacles for the crowd and make the confrontation more intuitive and intense.
The competition is web-streamed live on its official website, and on various video streaming platforms such as Youku Sports, Tencent Video/QQLive and Bilibili, as well as on Twitch for international audiences. In 2019, augmented reality features were added to provide live streaming audience with additional information such as floating health bars for each robot, real-time mini-map and energy/ammo status for drones.
The RoboMaster matches focus on the ability to apply and practise comprehensive knowledges in science and engineering disciplines, and require the participating members to fully integrate robotics disciplines such as machine vision, embedded system, mechanical engineering, inertial navigation and human–computer interaction, etc. The participating teams are required to independently design and build robots with different tactical roles, each remotely controlled by a team member. Automated target acquisition (i.e. "aimbot") are not only allowed but rather encouraged, because the teams that can programme better and faster targeting software are simply proving themselves to be superior engineers and thus should rightfully have a technical advantage over their opponents. Only electric and pneumatic power sources (<20 MPa) are allowed for the robots, and internal combustion, explosives and hazardous chemicals are banned. Robot weight, dimensions, power output and muzzle velocities are strictly regulated to prevent competitors gaining unfair advantages by merely having access to buy better components.
Mecanum wheels is a ubiquitous feature found on all ground robots, primarily due to the gameplay need for agility and tactical flexibility. Other than the Engineer robot, every competing robot is equipped with a projectile launcher that uses two motor-driven wheels to propel or plastic balls like a squash ball machine. Each robot is also equipped with an armor system with frequency-sensitive pressure sensor plates (provided by DJI) installed on its chassis, which detect projectile impacts. Real-time impact data are Wirelessly streamed to a centralized referee system, which will register health point (HP) deduction suffered by the hit robot. A robot will become offline and deactivated ("destroyed") if its HPs are completely depleted, but can be "revived" if a friendly Engineer retrieves it back to the regeneration area at its own Base. All the robots can only carry a limited volume of projectiles within their onboard hoppers, and need to periodically go back to the Base's supply point for reloading. The heavier 42 mm projectiles will register 10 times more damage than the standard 17 mm ones, but can only be collected at an elevated "resource island" in the center of the arena (accessible only by the Engineer). To discourage weapon spamming, each projectile launched by a robot is regarded to slightly "heat up" its gun, and prolonged shooting will "overheat" and cause health damage to itself. If a robot occupies a designated defensive position on the field known as "Outpost" (), it will receive a cover bonus that halves the damage suffered and a "cooling" bonus that triples its recovery rate from weapon "heating". During the match, the robots that survive longer and score more effective hits can also accumulate experience points and achieve leveling-ups to further increase its combat power. The robots can also complete on-field tasks — typically by shooting a spinning electronic targets known as the Power Rune () — and activate various minute-long power-ups to give its own team tactical advantages.
Accidental collision of the sensor plate with other objects will result in a slight HP deduction, but ramming is considered an illegal attack. Deliberate entanglement, restraining or obstruction of an opponent robot's movements and reloading procedures is also considered foul play, and perpetrator will be penalized. Depends on the severity of the offense, the penalty can vary from direct verbal warning by referees in the control room, the team's control interface being blacked out for 3 seconds, HP deduction, dismissal of the perpetrator, or even forfeiting the game.
The RoboMaster robots come in the following tactical types: Hero Robot (英雄机器人) — Heavy unit, only 1 per team (designated #1), launches 42 mm projectiles (originally golf balls, later plastic) that cause 100 HPs of damage to opponents with each hit, but relies on the Engineer to acquire and supply ammunition. Engineer Robot (工程机器人) — Optional support unit, only 1 per team (designated #2), has no offensive weaponry but has a large health pool and can regenerate its own HPs over time (therefore often serve as a meat shield or a blocker), can harvest 42 mm ammunitions from the resource island and deliver them to the Hero, and retrieves destroyed teammates for revival. Standard Robot (步兵机器人) — Light unit also known as Infantry, 2-3 per team (designated #3 to #5), launches 17 mm projectiles (originally rubber balls, later plastic) that causes 10 HPs of damage with each hit, and can complete on-field tasks that activate power-ups for the team. Aerial Robot (空中机器人) — Multicopter unit, only 1 per team (designated #6), can provide teammates with bird's-eye view information of the entire battlefield or shoot at enemies from the air, carries 500 rounds of 17 mm projectiles but needs to be fully charged on the Base helipad before flying in attack mode. Sentry Robot (哨兵机器人) — Fully automated Base defense sentry gun, only 1 per team (designated #7), moves along an elevated rail to shoot and repel invading enemies with 17 mm projectiles.