TKU’s robot football team won the world cup championship again! Chair of Dept. of Electrical Engineering, Dr. Ching-chang Wong, led 15 teammates to attend the 2007 FIRA World Cup Football Game, held at Los Angeles, USA, June 14 to 17, and took the championships both in “RoboSot League” and in “HuroSot League.” This is the first time that the TKU team wins gold medal in the HuroSot League, and also their best performance in recent years.

TKU team has dispatched newly made robot players to attend both game, which have set up new rules this year. In the RoboSot League, the size of the robot has been enlarged from 20cm x 20cm (2006) to 35cm×35cm square width; the span of the game field is extended from 260cm×220cm to 600 cm×400cm. As for the HuroSot League, it is separated into seven sections, and each section will award three winners. The champion is decided by the total scores from the seven sections. TKU got four first prizes in Dash, Penalty Kick, Weight Lifting, and Obstacle Run, and two second prizes in Basketball, and Marathon, and outshined the other teams. In the Dash section, TKU android breaks FIRA Cup world record with 27 seconds in total length.

Dr. Wong attributes the honorable success to the excellent teamwork. Since the team attended the FIRA world cup game for the first time in 2003, they have evolved the robots year after year. The android in this year is the fourth generation. It was newly installed at the end of May, so the teammates had to burn the midnight oil in the laboratory to make good use of their limited testing time. All students, including undergraduates, graduates, and Ph. D students, had done their parts to their utmost efforts to calculate all possible situations. Though the items of competitions have been increased from 4 to 7, their wonderful teamwork has conquered all complicated and rapid challenges. Dr. Wong believes that such a great achievement will incur positive response in the recruitment of graduate students to the new-established master program of “Robot Engineering.”

Team leader of HuroSot section, Yang Yu-ting, second year graduate student, states that “all of the teammate share the ambitions to win the championship, and we have incorporated every effort for the target.” ( ~Chen Chi-szu )