The annual DJI-sponsored RoboMaster competition, where aspiring engineers duke it out in a battle of next generation robots, concluded yesterday, with students from the South China University of Technology emerging victorious. This year's contest attracted entries from more than 200+ teams from all over the globe, with just 32 making it to the final.

"RoboMaster started in China a few years ago and has now attracted teams from the US, UK, Canada, and other parts of Asia, making it a global event," DJI's Paul Xu said.

For the battles that make up the tournament, each team's gaggle of five types of semi-autonomous or fully-autonomous robots – a standard battle bot, a hero droid, an engineer, a drone, and a base station robot – is required to navigate around a basketball court-sized, obstacle course-laden battlefield at the Shenzhen Bay Stadium in Shenzhen, China. The robots work with each other to take out enemy robots and destroy an opposing team's operational base.

The robots are fitted with sensors, and if hit by enemy fire, droid health points are sliced away. When a robot's health point index gets to zero, it's classed as being destroyed and out of the game, leaving the base station more vulnerable to attack.

RoboMaster teams have five types of semi- or fully-autonomous robots to use on the battefield RoboMasters/DJI

The finals were livestreamed thanks to a partnership with Twitch.tv, attracting over 814,000 online viewers from more than 20 countries, and 2017 RoboMaster gold went to the South China University of Technology from Guangzhou. The team emerged from a four game final battle with only one loss (each game lasts 7 minutes), and were crowned champions, taking home a trophy and CNY 200,000 (about US$30,000).

Second place, and CNY 100,000, went to Shandong University of Science and Technology, while the "bronze" prize of CNY 50,000 was awarded to the Taiyuan Institute of Technology.

You can check out some of the action from this year's competition over at Twitch.tv

Sources: RoboMaster, DJI