We are with you -- the State Key Laboratory of Industrial Control and Technology opened to public

Adhering to the concept of integrating science and education, the State Key Laboratory of Industrial Control and Technology held its annual public open day on May 19th, 2019. It was offered free of charge to the entire society, since the key is to spread ideas and promote public awareness of science and technology. Videos, models, prototypes and real robots were brought to the scene by CSE researchers, and they were introduced in a plain and vivid way to make the public of all ages accessible to technological innovation.

The day was divided into two sessions by the lunch break. The morning section included themes of Aerial Robots, Bicycle Elfectronic Fences, Mobile Phone Indoor Navigation, as well as Nature and Robots. In the afternoon, the piano robots and painting robots created a different art experience for the guests.

The research of aerial robot mainly focuses on the control navigation and image processing technology. This team realizes the autonomous navigation and landing of the drone. By installing the four-rotor to the drone, they make vertical take-off and landing come true. Taking off vertically, the drone will then switch to the normal horizontal flight mode, and the computer carried by the drone will plan a path for flying. Later when the mission is completed, the drone will look for the landing field with QR code using a camera, and then switch back to the vertical mode for descending.

When it comes to bionic robots, Dr. REN Qinyuan opened the gate of his robotic zoo by animals like squid, snake and spider. Traditional bionic robots have relatively weak perception and adaptability of environment, as Dr. Ren introduced, but we can learn from real animals. By designing artificial mechanical systems that are similar to biological systems, researchers use controlled algorithms to transfer the ability of animals to artificial machinery. Take the mechanical snake as an example, it could quickly advance according to the specified route and avoid obstacles at the same time. As for the mechanical fish that could swim steadily in water, building a high-speed camera system to capture the movement of real koi fish by three-dimensional reconstruction is essential. He also showed the environmentally-adaptive hexapod mechanical spider made by his team.

Dr. Ren asked if anyone wanted to try it out for himself, and with the voice many young viewers highly raised their hands one after another.

With special gloves, the viewers were able to control the movement of the spider. It seems that Iron Man is not far away from us, isn’t it?!

In the afternoon, piano-performing robot and painting robot made CSE more of an amusement park. The piano robot performed with two fingers actuated by robotic arms, which were controlled to perform the musical composition by parsing the musical score into a series of key sequences.

On the other side, as soon as the viewers complete their works on a tablet, the painting robot would drive a pen to reproduce the painting, attracting many viewers to line up for a try.

In addition, 5G communication, the cutting-edge technology at the moment, participated in the show. 5G communication is characterized by broad bandwidth and fast speed, which makes the realization of remote driving possible. Usually the real-time requirement for driving is extremely high, and half a second in promotion of reaction time may avoid a traffic accident. Remote driving vehicles are often cursed by safety problems due to excessive control delay, however, the emergence of 5G brings the dawn of long-distance driving.

Under the instruction, children were driving a car 10-km away on a square.

According to the host, the day attracted more than 600 groups of applicants to sign up in merely two days after the notice was released. Besides ZJU faculty, employees of sci-tech enterprises like Supcon and Insigma also actively bring their children to visit and learn. 

“Indeed, it reflects the charm of the interdisciplinary study”, a professor of the ZJU Ocean College came here all the way with his children and said he himself got inspired a lot. For instance, the aerial robot may be applied in multiple ways to protect marine resources, and one of them is inspection during the forbidden fishing period. 

The CSE college was founded in 1956. For more than 60 years, CSE people have built a history of excellence in education and discovery, and the college is now one of the most prestigious research and education bases in the area of industrial process control in China. By the open-day event, it hopes to motivate the young generation and inspire the public to know the charm of science and technology. “Green comes from blue, but it excels blue.” Like the old Chinese saying goes, it looks forward to more sci-tech explorers to join. 

Reporter: YU Hongxiang, WANG Zhicheng

Editor: WANG Jing