Kong and Zhang's winning competition entry.

Ph.D. students Kong Zheng and Zhang Yi from the School of Mechanical Engineering at Xi'an Jiaotong University (XJTU) won the first-place award in the postgraduate division of the 2023 ASME Student Mechanism and Robot Design Competition (SMRDC) for their entry "A Multi-stable Elephant Trunk Robot Capable of Abrupt Stiffness Change."

The SMRDC took place as part of the ASME International Design Engineering Technical Conferences & Computers and Information in Engineering Conference held from Aug 20-23 in Boston, the United States.

A total of six teams from universities including Yale University, Pennsylvania State University, Clemson University, Cork National University in Ireland, and XJTU, participated with XJTU's team winning the championship.

The SMRDC is co-hosted by the National Science Foundation and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). It was initiated in 2006 and is held annually, with two categories: "Undergraduate" and "Postgraduate."

Students from various countries and regions around the world participate in the competition, making it one of the most influential international student competitions in the field of mechanics and robot design.