GeminiPYTW, a Taiwan team composed of Paraguayan international students, has won third place in the finals of the 2nd Kibo Robot Programming Challenge (Kibo-RPC) organized by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).
The Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) is actively fostering space technology and industry talents and promoting space science. In line with MOST policy, NARLabs' National Space Organization (NSPO) actively assists Taiwan's students in participating in international space technology-related competitions. In addition to hosting the Kibo-RPC Preliminary Round in which Team GeminiPYTW won, the NSPO also supported GeminiPYTW in participating in the finals.
Kibo is a module built by Japan's JAXA for the International Space Station (ISS). This year's challenge was the same as the previous year's, but with a higher degree of difficulty. In the challenge scenario, the ISS once again has an air leak, and student competitors have to program the Astrobee, a flying robot on the Kibo, to make precise movements while avoiding Keep Out Zones to arrive at a designated point, where it must then perform specific actions to successfully stop the leak. Students were required to compile programs for the Astrobee with stable algorithms that would allow it to reach its destination in time while taking into account the Keep Out Zones and other uncertainties. To assess how these uncertainties are handled, each program is executed 8 times for a total of 8 different results, and the final score is taken from the worst result. If the robot is unable to complete the mission within 10 minutes, no score is given.
A total of nine countries in the Asia-Pacific region participated in the Kibo-RPC finals held on October 24th, and the team representing Taiwan was the second seed (ranked second in the semifinals). The competition was originally set to be held at the JAXA Tsukuba Space Center, where the ISS is controlled, but due to the epidemic, it was instead conducted online. The livestream of the finals was hosted by Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui, who, along with former ISS Commander Akihiko Hoshide, an astronaut currently onboard the station, directly controlled the Astrobee robot.
The competition lasted 1 hour and 20 minutes, during which the programs from the 9 national teams were loaded into the Astrobee robot in order of the semifinal rankings, with Taiwan competing second. Because the challenge was more difficult than last year, only two teams controlling the Astrobee were able to complete the mission and be classified as Rank A. First place was awarded to the team from Thailand, and second place to the team from Bangladesh. Although Taiwan's team did not complete the mission, they performed best among the teams in Rank C, and thus won third place overall.
On the day of the finals, a local venue was set up in Zhongli at Gran Systems, with video linked to JAXA's headquarters. JAXA, who has expended a great amount in the utilization of the ISS, stated that this year's Kibo-RPC was even more successful than the first one. The NSPO looks forward to JAXA holding such a high-level competition again next year and hopes that students from Taiwan's schools who are interested in space research and robotics design will again be enthusiastic to participate and seize the rare opportunity to interact with the International Space Station.
