“It was the nine losses out of ten matches that took the team to new heights,” says Billy Yip, team coach of CUHK Robotics Team. “There were 14 teams participating this year, making the contest particularly tough.”

Team Golden Striker’s road to success was far from easy. In ten internal practice matches, the team was defeated nine times by its opponents. “At that time, it was only a week before the contest,” he adds. “We could have been fighting a losing battle.”

The repeated failure drove the team to go to great lengths. After evaluating the matches and learning from their mistakes, team members racked their brains to think of groundbreaking ideas. “We came up with a creative approach to keeping the robots away from the opponents’ effective range. It was a reliable strategy and the key to victory,” says team leader Kwok Lam Him proudly. “I am also thankful for the hard work of my diligent teammates. All this would not have been possible without skilled techniques, talented minds and, most importantly, team spirit.”

The theme of this year’s contest, Lagori, was inspired by a traditional game that originated in South India. The contest required both the team’s robots to be fast and accurate. The goal of the match was to hit the opponent’s tower made of Lagori discs within a time limit. There were two teams in each knockout match.

The Robocon Hong Kong Contest is an annual flagship event organised by the Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation, which aims to nurture local talents and take the city’s innovative technologies to the international stage. CUHK’s Golden Striker will be representing Hong Kong in the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union (ABU) Asia-Pacific Robot Contest 2022, to be held in India.