Teams compete for top spots in innovation contest

Participants and audience enjoy the game of building bridges. [Photo/provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

From a climbing robot named "Spiderman" to an improved biomimetic solar panel inspired by a smoggy day and a 3D print model of an assembling department for elderly people, eighteen teams brought their projects to compete for the top twelve spots in the final innovation contest at the China Science and Technology Museum last week.

After the first round of the competition in July, fifty-eight teams from both high schools and universities qualified for the second round of the National Youth Scientific Innovation and Experiment Contest Beijing division.

Xu Wenjie, a student from Shanxi Traffic Technician College, spent five months designing a cross-sea bridge model for the Qionghai Strait. The bridge will not only allow cars and trains to cross the strait, but also allow ships of certain sizes to go through the bridge. Fans on the sides of the bridge can take advantage of the wind to generate electricity, as well as reduce wind damage.

"He really loves bridges and has written a paper for more than 30,000 words to demonstrate his plan," said Li Jianwei, Xu’s advisor. "Even his family didn’t support him at first, he never gave up."

This is the fourth consecutive year of the contest entitled "Solve for Tomorrow", with three main themes of energy conservation, environmental protection and health.

In the scientific experiment section, there are three topics - intelligent transportation, energy utilization and security protection.

On the court of intelligent transportation, participants use mobile phones to control the device to finish the game.  [Photo/provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

With the help of tracking and sensor techniques, the task of intelligent transportation required participants to use mobile phones to control the device and finish the race without seeing the court. Devices had to go against the wind with a 40kg load to achieve the goal of energy utilization. While in order to finish the mission of security protection, students could only use glue and battens the size of a pencil to design a bridge that might bear a strike in different magnitudes.

The section of innovative work encourages students to discover the problem, solve it and focus more on the application of their work.

Students from Beijing No 4 High School designed a robot that can climb on walls with two sucker feet.

"The first generation does have some problem," one of the team members said of their winning design. "But in the future, we hope it can clean the wall for us, or even be useful in the military."

A team from Inner Mongolia University of Technology has been negotiating with manufacturers and museums to apply their solution. They designed an illuminating system for an earthen historical site museum to protect relics from light damage, while storing solar power for further use.

More projects are going from paper to reality. Eighty cars with the automobile sharing system designed by Team Yang Wang Xing Kong (looking at the stars) are running on the road, trying to increase the usage rate of renting cars as well as reducing the waste of energy and traffic jams.

A model for a paper package recycle machine is also on the production line.

Together with winners from Harbin, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chengdu divisions, the twelve winning teams in Beijing will compete for the championship in December.