Young makers battle in competition---szdaily多媒体数字报刊平台

Anna Zhao

anna.whizh@yahoo.com

A ROBOT designed to carry loads outperformed 21 other maker projects to win the first prize of 20,000 yuan (US$3,014) after 48 hours of brainstorming at a makers’ competition in Shenzhen on Sunday.

The Shenzhen competition, now in its third year, is one of seven preliminaries of an annual China-U.S. maker competition to be held in Beijing in August. The August event will be organized by the Ministry of Education.

Although most of the contestants were school students, ideas at the competition were challenging the brains of grownups.

Many inventions showed concern for daily life and health care. For example, a smart toilet that could provide health data by checking urine, a machine to track a pet’s health, and a sleep-monitoring mat for babies, were all put forward.

Robots remain an important source of new ideas among makers, with other robots for parking cars and providing company.

Liang Zhicheng, a physics teacher from Zhixin High School in Guangzhou, brought his students to the competition with an interactive storage box that is controlled by an app. He said their invention was intended to increase fun for users. To make their invention more attractive, they developed a ladybug design.

Zhou Maohua, a teacher from Shenzhen Second Senior School, who led his students at the competition for the third consecutive year, said the competition is a good chance to inspire innovative thinking for his students.

Zhou said it’s difficult for his students, who have to prepare for the National College Entrance Examinations in the third year of high school, to keep pursuing their interests at school so this is a precious opportunity to make their dreams into reality.

Shirley Feng, co-founder of the Shenzhen Open Innovation Lab and secretary general of the Shenzhen Industrial Design Profession Association, said ideas presented at this year’s competition boasted good creativity and contestants were much younger than last year.

“It’s pretty obvious that makers’ products with good industrial design added merit to their competitiveness at this competition, because caring for design can bring a humanistic touch to products,” Feng said, adding that she hopes to see more ideas with better design to increase practicality.

Six winning maker teams will battle in the China-U.S. Young Maker Competition in August in Beijing.