Guangzhou Education Information Center(GEIC) Stages App Inventor Robot Contest

Jun 3, 2016 karen's Blog

This is a guest blog by Zanjian Li, from the GuangZhou Education Information Center

On May 8th, the Robot Competition for Primary school and Secondary School Students of Guangzhou 2016 was successfully held by the Guangzhou Education Information Center (GEIC). 305 teams from 166 schools participated in the competition. The competition consisted of 15 different programs, such as App Inventor Robot Contest, Robot Designing, FIRST LEGO League(FLL), Robot Football, Robot Basketball etc.

The highlight of the competition was the App Inventor Robot Contest, which was designed by GEIC and was the first contest combining App Inventor and robotic technology in China. The theme of the contest game was Getting the treasures on the map. In the game, the players needed to assemble a small robot without a controller, design a controller app using App Inventor, download and install it onto a cellphone, then fix the cellphone on the robotic chassis, to make a fully working robot. The cellphone directed had to execute the task automatically, including finding the path on the map by color blocks, searching for the QR code(treasure), scanning it, and sending the scanning result to the cellphone of judges.

The Contest is a part of plan by GEIC to promote the use of App Inventor in China. GEIC spent months in preparation for the App Inventor Robot Contest; they saw the contest as one of the follow-up measures from the Memorandum of Understanding between MIT and South China University of Technology (SCUT) signed in 2015, and hopes 0the contest will be a good example for other cities. The contest also drew the interest of several news media outlets in China - the Guangdong TV station and some local newspapers reported on the contest.

5月8日， 由广州市教育信息中心组织的“2016年广州市中小学电脑机器人竞赛活动”成功举办，共有来自166所学校的305支队伍参加了本次竞赛，竞赛共包括15个项目：如App Inventor机器人竞赛、机器人设计、乐高机器人、机器足球、机器人篮球等。 本次竞赛的亮点在于“App Inventor机器人竞赛”项目，这一项目由广州市教育信息中心设计，是国内首内结合App Inventor和机器人技术的区域性竞赛活动。 　竞赛的主题为“地图寻宝”，在竞赛过程中，选手们需要组装一台没有控制器的小型机器人，在App Inventor平台上进行程序设计，安装到一台手机上，再把手机固定到机器人上，使其成为机器人的控制器。这一台携带手机的机器人将自动完成竞赛任务，包括在搭载手机在地图上通过判断颜色寻找路径、搜索和查找二维码（宝藏）、把二维码发送到裁判手机上等。 本次竞赛是广州市教育信息中心推动App Inventor在全国应用的计划的一部分，已准备了数月，并将其视为去年与MIT及华南理工大学签订合作备忘录的后续动作之一，并希望这一竞赛为其它城市起到示范作用。本次活动还吸引了不少新闻媒体，广东电视台和几家报纸对其进行了报导。