In March 2022, the finals of the 2021 World Robot Contest (World Robot Contest) Artificial Intelligence Technology Application Competition, which was postponed and rescheduled to online due to the impact of the epidemic, came to a successful conclusion. In this event, which has been praised by major mainstream media as the "Olympiad" in the robot industry, there is a secondary vocational student from Shenzhen who stood out among a group of higher vocational students and won the first prize, he is Zheng Hongjie.
▲ Zheng Hongjie
Promote learning through competition and find interest
Zheng Hongjie, born in 2002, grew up in Shenzhen. When he chose to study computer application at Shenzhen No. 1 Vocational and Technical School (hereinafter referred to as "Shenzhen No. 1 Vocational School"), Zheng Hongjie did not know anything about computers. It wasn't until he joined the school's competition team that he not only gradually learned what a computer was under the professional guidance of his seniors and teachers, so that the more he studied, the more interested he became, and he got good results in the first competition.
Zheng Hongjie still remembers that when he was preparing for the competition in the second year of high school, in order to let everyone learn more knowledge and solve technical problems, the school's teacher Pan Tao specially took them to Xiamen Jimei Industrial School by high-speed rail for technical exchanges. "That was my first time out of the province, and it was also the first time I went to other schools to do technical exchanges. Zheng Hongjie said that after arriving at Jimei Industrial School, he was amazed that the training room, which was more than twice the size of his school, was so well equipped, and he admired their participating students for winning the second prize in the national competition last year. In the exchange, Zheng Hongjie found that there was indeed a gap between his operation speed and the other party, and many long-perplexing problems were also solved, and at the same time he learned more quick operation skills of the computer system. After returning to school, he stepped up his practice and won the first prize in the 2020-2021 Guangdong Vocational Skills Competition "Network Construction and Application" (Secondary Vocational Group).
In the three years of high school life, Zheng Hongjie's most memorable thing is the training room on the 9th floor of the school's training building, which carries the time when he insists on training hard, and also witnesses a confused big boy slowly finding the direction of the future.
▲Zheng Hongjie (second from right) won the first prize in the World Artificial Intelligence Conference Ecological Competition-2023 Amazon DeepRacer Future Builders Finals.
Start from zero and overtake in corners
The club culture of Shenzhen has always been very strong, but there are few science and technology innovation and technology clubs, so the two teachers of the school, Peng Dexin and Chen Shuo, founded the science and technology innovation club, which mainly covers the current hot AI technology and IT technology, and inspires students to think and create through project-based teaching guidance. This opened the door to the world of artificial intelligence for Zheng Hongjie, one of the first members of the club.
Soon, the club was ready to participate in the first international competition, the World Robot Competition. Zheng Hongjie took the initiative to ask after knowing about it: "In the current context of the rapid development of big data and artificial intelligence technology, participating in this competition is very helpful for my current skills and future development. ”
In this way, in the tight time of only one month before the competition, Zheng Hongjie prepared from scratch under the guidance of the teacher, and when he first learned theoretical knowledge, Zheng Hongjie couldn't understand anything, but he tried to digest the basic knowledge in the shortest possible time, and entered the practical stage, training from 8 o'clock in the morning to 10 o'clock in the evening every day. Unexpectedly, when the game was approaching, there were twists and turns, affected by the epidemic, Zheng Hongjie could only go home to practice, the teachers made a special trip to send the machine to his home, and the game was postponed, changed to online, and the higher vocational group and the middle vocational group competed together, which was a test for the player's practical training and psychological state.
In the face of all kinds of unfavorable conditions, Zheng Hongjie's mentality was more relaxed, "I told myself that it would be good to win a winning award." As a result, he did not fall behind in the competition with many experienced vocational students, won the first prize, and was also the only secondary vocational student among the winners.
Slowly, Zheng Hongjie fell in love with the feeling of the game. He found that in the process of preparing for the competition, his learning ability was rapidly improving, and his professional knowledge was also rapidly accumulating. When he took professional classes in school, he often either had already mastered many of the teaching contents, or he was easier to use than most of his classmates. This also made Zheng Hongjie's confidence grow day by day.
▲Zheng Hongjie (middle) at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference Ecological Competition - 2023 Amazon DeepRacer Future Builders Finals.
Stay up late to compete and work hard to "make money"
It is said that Shenzhen people love to "make money" because of the pursuit of quality of life and the struggle for future goals. And Zheng Hongjie, who is only in his sophomore year, is already working hard to "make money". Because he once won the first prize in the national competition, Zheng Hongjie was sent to Shenzhen Polytechnic University after graduation. When he was in college, Zheng Hongjie started a life of "brushing competitions" again.
When he first entered college, Zheng Hongjie learned about the Amazon DeepRacer competition at a lecture at school, which is simply to train a car with a reinforcement learning model to see whose car runs a more standard route and is faster. Although this competition is easy to get started, simple to get started, and full of fun, in order to achieve satisfactory results, the contestants must control all aspects such as writing code, training models, adjusting parameters, and debugging physical smart cars, which requires repeated trial and error and countless times of training.
For Zheng Hongjie, this is another attempt to start from scratch, "It took me the longest time, and it was also the most profitable race for me. He first participated in the Amazon DeepRacer Competition, won the second place, and then continued to participate in the 2023 Amazon DeepRacer Future Builders Finals of the World Artificial Intelligence Conference held in Shanghai. Zheng Hongjie did not have stage fright in the fierce duel with players from Tsinghua University, Fudan University, East China Normal University, Donghua University and other universities, and won the first prize. At the same time, Zheng Hongjie has been participating in the points competition of the DeepRacer global competition online since March last year. In the first monthly competition, he was still at the bottom of the more than 3,000 players in the world, so he would stay up late at the end of each month, constantly revising the debugging plan, and strive to reach the leaderboard, and in May, he had won the first place in the global points and qualified for the finals. In the end, Zheng Hongjie won the second place in the global student group in the finals.
These competitions not only allowed Zheng Hongjie to apply for the Amazon Web Services Global Scholarship, but also gained a lot of prize money, and he has saved tens of thousands of yuan in prize money. Up to now, Zheng Hongjie is not only still competing with DeepRacer, but also starting another worldquant quantitative investment competition. He said that in different competitions, he can learn about the subdivisions of artificial intelligence and find future employment directions, which is also to accumulate capital and save a foundation for future life and work choices.
Profile
Zheng Hongjie is a sophomore majoring in computer network technology at Shenzhen Polytechnic University. WRCF2021 first prize of the World Robot Finals, and the first prize of Guangdong Province for network construction and application. During college, he won the runner-up in the 2023 AWS DeepRacer Global Student League Finals.
Source | Crystal APP
Reporter: Lin Fei
Editor: Ye Hui