The 2024 ABB Cup Intelligent Technology Innovation Competition has officially begun

Parallel four major competition questions, closely aligned with industry hot topics, and oriented towards future scientific research exploration and career development

Empowering intelligent manufacturing with technological innovation, injecting surging new momentum into the development of new quality productivity

The 2024 ABB Cup Intelligent Technology Innovation Competition, jointly organized by ABB and the Chinese Society of Automation, officially kicked off today. This competition consists of four sets of questions, focusing comprehensively on key technological fields related to intelligent manufacturing such as artificial intelligence, digital twins, data modeling, and human-computer interaction. The competition is themed "Intelligent Technology Leads the Future" and guided by solving specific industrial problems. Its aim is to promote learning through competition, enhance abilities through learning, and cultivate an outstanding reserve of engineers with both innovative spirit and practical ability.

Dr. Gu Chunyuan, Chairman of ABB China, pointed out that "this year's ABB Cup Intelligent Technology Innovation Competition closely follows technological trends to design competition questions, broaden the track, and build an open platform for young students to unleash their imagination. In real application scenarios and specific industrial cases, they practice new technologies, hone new thinking, apply what they have learned, and lay a solid foundation for future scientific and technological change and industrial development."

Dr. Zhang Nan, Secretary General of the Chinese Society of Automation, said, "China is accelerating the construction of a national strategic talent force, striving to cultivate top-notch innovative talents, and build an excellent team of engineers and high skilled talents. The innovation competition jointly organized by the Chinese Society of Automation and ABB is highly compatible with this direction, relying on the advantages of industry university research collaboration, stimulating students' innovation enthusiasm, facing industry application practice, expanding disciplinary knowledge boundaries, encouraging cross disciplinary integration and cross-border innovation, accumulating the power of high skilled talents, and building a foundation for high-quality development

This competition is open to colleges, secondary vocational schools and higher vocational students (including overseas college students) in Chinese Mainland, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan. Contestants can participate in the competition individually or as a team, boldly brainstorming and actively exploring based on the selected questions, unleashing unlimited imagination in interdisciplinary integration, and overcoming application difficulties and challenges in industrial scenarios

Competition Question 1: Cyber Building Blocks - AI Control Application Based on the "Amphibious" Operating System of B&R

The deep integration of IT and OT is an inevitable trend in intelligent manufacturing. For example, through the seamless integration of Linux open-source ecosystem software and industrial control systems, real-time tasks and non real time tasks can be interacted in both directions, which will provide strong support for industrial intelligence.

Participants in this competition need to use AI intelligent algorithms for image processing in a Linux environment, splitting the image given by the organizer into several blocks of different colors and specifications. Then, through reasonable planning, the minimum number of blocks used can be achieved while ensuring maximum similarity; Finally, the logic and motion control programming of the actuator was implemented based on the B&R Automation Studio software, and the building blocks were assembled into the original image.

Question 2: Defending the Vanguard - Intelligent Fault Monitoring of Electric Motors Based on Deep Learning

Strip breakage is one of the common faults in motor operation, which seriously affects motor performance, energy efficiency, and even causes equipment damage. If early warning and diagnosis can be carried out, it will help reduce equipment damage and downtime, improve motor reliability and work efficiency.

Participants in this competition need to solve problems such as signal processing, feature extraction, and image recognition based on data provided by ABB from motor applications. Based on fault mechanisms and machine learning/deep learning techniques, they need to establish an ABB motor rotor fracture monitoring model and provide results based on validation set data.

Topic 3: Exploration of Interconnection - Innovation of Digital Interconnection Applications between Robots and PLCs

As the core equipment in industrial control systems, programmable logic controllers (PLCs) play an irreplaceable role in achieving automation control of production processes. It is particularly important to achieve efficient communication between robots and PLCs in order to improve production efficiency and quality.

This competition requires participants to use ABB's professional robot simulation software RobotStudio and various PLC simulation software to design realistic and highly realistic simulation application cases, achieve OPC UA communication interaction between robots and PLCs, and deepen their understanding of the working principles and communication mechanisms of industrial robots and PLCs.

Question 4: Smart Fusion - When Robots Encounter Mobile Devices

The rapid iteration of mobile device technology has brought infinite innovation possibilities to the robotics industry. The integration of the two greatly enhances the perception and adaptability of robots, and provides strong support for their mobile interconnection and intelligent interaction.

This competition invites participants to unleash their creativity, propose and implement innovative designs that integrate robots with mobile devices, such as utilizing the sensors, touch screens, and powerful communication capabilities of mobile devices to empower robots, explore the potential of robot applications, or solve engineering problems in robot calibration, human-computer interaction, perception diagnosis, trajectory planning, and generation.

The ABB Cup Intelligent Technology Innovation Competition will provide a broad platform for participating students to showcase their creativity and improve themselves. During the competition, contestants will learn, understand, and apply industry-leading industrial software, platforms, and equipment, grasp the latest technological trends and application directions, while testing their own learning, accumulating innovative experience, and exercising practical abilities, which will add points to their future education or job search.