ZJU-ZMART won world championship of 2018 International Aerial Robotics Competition, Mission 7

On August 27, 2018, assessed by the International Aerial Robotics Competition (IARC) Committee, Zhejiang University team ZMART won the IARC 7th mission world championship with the highest comprehensive score, and won the prize of 20,000 US dollars. Zhejiang University became the seventh world champion of IARC after Stanford University (1995), Carnegie Mellon University (1997), Berlin University of Technology (2000), Georgia Tech (2008), MIT (2009) and Tsinghua University (2013). After the end of MISSION 7, the IARC competition will enter into MISSION 8.

The ZMART team of Zhejiang University was established in 2012. The team members are graduate students and undergraduates and they are directed by Dr. XU Chao and Dr. ZHANG Yu from the College of Control Science and Engineering of Zhejiang University. The team participated in the 7th mission in 2014, and showed strong ability in control, navigation, perception and decision-making in the competition. From 2016 to 2018, they won the first place in the competition for three consecutive years.

The International Aerial Robotics Competition (IARC) began in 1991. As of 2018, the event has gone through 28 years and has accomplished seven missions. The competition promotes advances in robotics by setting challenging tasks. 2018 is the fifth year of MISSION 7 "Aerial Shepherd Dog", requiring teams to overcome many technical problems such as control, planning, perception, and obstacle avoidance, making the aerial robot (i.e., the shepherd dog) completely autonomous, and quickly “drive away” ground moving object (flock of sheep) to designated safe areas (sheepfold) while avoiding collisions with moving obstacles (wolves) at different heights. The 7th mission lasted for five years. In addition to Zhejiang University, there were more than 50 universities that participated in the competition including MIT, Pennsylvania University, Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Michigan, Purdue University, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Tsinghua University, Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Xiamen University, Harbin Institute of Technology, Zhongshan University and Indian Institute of Technology.

List of Team Members:

2018: YE Hongkai (Captain), WANG Zhepei (Group Leader), XIONG Kun, ZHANG Kunyi, DING Ziming, WAN Zeyu

2017: WENG Yizhen (Captain), WANG Zhepei (Group Leader), ZHU Jiangcheng, WAN Xudong, ZHU Jun, YE Hongkai, ZHANG Kunyi, GUO Lei, XIONG Kun

2016: WANG Hongda (Captain), ZHU Jiangcheng (Group Leader), WENG Yizhen, YE Bo, RU Xiangyu, ZHU Jun, WAN Xudong, CUI Can, QIU Wei, GUO Lei

2015: YE Changchun (Captain), ZHU Jiangcheng (Group Leader), WANG Hongda, WENG Yizhen, YE Bo, RU Xiangyu, CUI Can, QIU Wei, HUANG Yongbin

2014: QIN Tong (Captain), ZHU Jiangcheng (Group Leader), WENG Yizhen, LOU Changxu, HUANG Xianan, LIU Haoyu, WANG Zhonglei, CHEN Yikuan, YE Changchun, Han Tao