An interdisciplinary team from the University of Macau (UM) has scooped a prestigious award at this year’s World Robot Contest in Beijing, with an innovative system that can monitor the emotions and changing psychological states of a human being.
Led by third-year electrical and computer engineering student Li Haobo, the team won the grand prize in the MetaBCI Innovative Application Development category of the competition’s Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) Controlled Robot segment.
The work featured an electroencephalogram (EEG) system that “can be seamlessly integrated into smart home systems, enabling automated control based on context awareness,” according to a statement from UM. “It has broad application prospects in areas such as mental health monitoring and intelligent human-computer interaction.”
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This was Li’s third consecutive year participating in the contest and UM said he had achieved “outstanding results” each year.
His team was one of 31 from UM at the 2025 World Robot Contest. Under the mentorship of associate professor Wan Feng from the university’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, the teams competed in eight contest categories. “Excellent results” were produced across the board, according to UM.
Organised by the Chinese Institute of Electronics and known as the Olympic Games of robotics, the World Robot Contest has been running since 2015. It has attracted over 500,000 participants from more than 20 countries and regions across these years.
