Robot competition

A robotic competition is an event where robots have to accomplish a given task. Usually they have to beat other robots in order to become the best one.

Most competitions are for schools but as time goes by, several professional competitions are arising.

There is a wide variety of competitions for robots of various types. The following examples are describe a few of the higher profile events.

RoboGames

Recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the "World's Largest Robot Competition", the RoboGames (formerly ROBOlympics) host over 70 different events and are modeled on the human Olympics. Robot soccer, sumo, combat, android wrestling, maze solving, fire-fighting, biped races, balancer races, and exoskeletons are a few of the events held. Teams compete from around the world, and RoboGames has no prerequisites for contestants, it is open to anyone regardless of age or affiliation.

Aerial robotic vehicle competitions

The AUVSI International Aerial Robotics Competition is the longest running aerial robotic event, held annually since 1991. This competition involves fully autonomous flying robots performing tasks that, at the time posed, are undemonstrated anywhere world wide. The competition is open to universities and has had missions involving ground object capture and transfer, hazardous waste location and identification, disaster scene search and rescue, and remote surveillance of building interiors by fully autonomous robots launched from 3km. In 2008 an $80,000 prize was awarded.

A series of micro air vehicle (MAV) events have been sponsored by various organizations including the University of Florida, the U.S. Army, French DGA, Indian Ministry of Defense , and others over the past decade. Typically, these competitions involve capability demonstrations rather than missions, and may or may not involve full autonomy. Prizes range up to an aggregate value of $600,000 in 2008.

Ground robotic vehicle competitions

The DARPA Grand Challenge is a competition for driverless cars to traverse, in the shortest time possible, a path of pre-defined start and finish points. The unclaimed 2004 prize for navigating through the Mojave Desert was $1,000,000. The farthest any participant got was only 7.4 miles. However, the 2005 prize of $2,000,000 was claimed by Stanford University. In this race, four vehicles successfully completed the race. This is a testament to how fast robotic vision and navigation are improving. The 2007 competition pits the vehicles against a mock-urban course with live traffic obstacles.

The Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition is a competition for autonomous ground vehicles that must traverse outdoor obstacle courses without any human interaction. This international competition sponsored by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI), is a student design competition at the university level and has held annual competitions since 1992.

Underwater robotic vehicle competitions

The AUVSI and the U.S. Office of Naval Research have sponsored the International Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Competition since 1997. This competition, as with the AUVSI Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition is a spin-off of the AUVSI International Aerial Robotics Competition, and as such, carry through the theme of full autonomy of operation, albeit in a subsurface robotic vehicle. This too is a collegiate competition.

The Marine Academy of Technology and Environmental Sciences (MATE) sponsors a annual international ROV Competition currently in its eighth year. The competition is open to colleges and high schools globally, however, the college teams are limited to undergraduate students.

worst

The BEST Robotics competition includes two elements: a robot competition, in which teams attempt to score as many points as possible in head-to-head competition, and the BEST award. The BEST award is more complex, encompassing such tasks as writing a high-quality technical notebook or engineering journal, designing a website, an interview, delivering an oral presentation to a panel of judges, and creating a table display booth. BEST is the second largest robotics competition in the U.S. with approximately 800 schools and over 10,000 students participating.

Another challenge teams involved in BEST face is limited materials – the primary construction materials used in BEST are simple and easily formed. These materials include PVC pipe, string, plywood, a limited quantity of sheet metal, and a bit of aluminum, as well as miscellaneous hardware, 2 large motors and 2 small motors, and the electronics necessary to run these motors and the 3 provided servos. At the beginning of competition, the robot is checked over to make sure that no illegal parts are used. Originally, old printers were also part of the BEST kit and printer parts could be used on the machine. The limited materials make students think much more creatively with what they are given.

International METU Robotics Days

The International METU Robotics Days event is hosted annually by the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey. The Robotics Days include competitions as well as lectures and workshops designed to bring professionals, academics and amateurs together.

IEEE Micromouse competition

In Micromouse competitions, small robots try to solve a maze in the fastest time. The current format involves the "mouse" finding its way to the centre of a 16x16 maze. The competitions have been held since 1979 and are conducted in countries around the world.

FIRST competition

Dean Kamen, Founder of FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), created the world's leading high school robotics competition in 1992. FIRST provides a varsity-like competitive forum that inspires in young people, their schools and communities in an appreciation of science and technology.

Their robotics competition is a multinational competition that teams professionals and young people to solve an engineering design problem in an intense and competitive way. Their outreach includes the original FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) and the newer FIRST Vex Challenge (FVC or FTC) for ages 14-18, the FIRST Lego League (FLL) for ages 9-14, and Junior FIRST Lego League (JFLL) for ages 6-9. In 2007, there were over 130,000 students and 37,000 adult mentors from around the world involved in at least one of FIRST's competitions. FIRST encourages teams to find adults from outside of the school environment who can pass on their knowledge as mentors. There are thousands of scholarships available to students who participate.

The FLL robots are entirely autonomous; the FVC competition involves separate autonomous and driver control matches; and the FRC competition involves an initial autonomous period (10 or 15 seconds) followed by tele-operated driver control.

RoboCup

RoboCup is a competitive organization dedicated to developing a team of fully autonomous humanoid robots that can win against the human world soccer champion team by the year 2050. There are many different leagues ranging from computer simulation, to full-size humanoid robots.

RoboCup Junior is similar to RoboCup. RoboCup Junior is a competition for primary and secondary school aged students. RoboCup Junior includes three competitions:

• soccer - two robots per team play autonomously in a game of soccer
• rescue - an obstacle course in which a robot must follow a line to retrieve an object, and bring it back to safety as fast as possible
• dance - robots are designed to dance to music and are judged on criteria such as creativity and costumes

As is the case with RoboCup, all robots are designed and developed solely by the students and act autonomously without any form of remote control or human intervention.

Botball Educational Robotics

Botball is a robotics competition for middle and high school students. Organized by the KISS Institute for Practical Robotics, Botball encourages participants to work constructively within their team building basic communication, problem solving, design, and programming skills. Each team builds one or more (up to four) robots that will autonomously move scoring objects into scoring positions.

Mobile Autonomous Systems Laboratory competition

The Mobile Autonomous Systems Laboratory is a university-level vision-based autonomous robotics competition. The competition is open to students of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and requires multithreaded applications of image processing, robotic movements, and target ball deposition. The robots are run with Debian Linux and run on an independent OrcBoard platform that facilitates sensor-hardware additions and recognition.

Annual fire-fighting home robot contest

Trinity College (Connecticut) also has an annual firefighting robot contest (http://www.trincoll.edu/events/robot/) which is participated by high schools and colleges from around the world including from countries like Israel and China. This is the largest, public robotics competition held in the U.S. that is open to entrants of any age, ability or experience from anywhere in the world[2]. The 14th Annual Trinity College Fire-Fighting Home Robot Contest was held on the Trinity campus in Hartford, Connecticut on April 14-15 in 2007. One new event in the concept division was added to the 2007 competition, which is the baby-finding contest. Participants will have to find both the flame and the simulated baby, extinguish the former and announce (or bring it to people's attention somehow) when it finds the latter in the expert division. In the concept division, simply finding the baby and notifying the people is sufficient. Check the event website for contest details.

Duke Annual Robo-Climb Competition (DARC)

Hosted by Duke University, the Duke Annual Robo-Climb Competition (DARC) challenges students to create innovative wall-climbing robots that can ascend vertical surfaces. The competition, which will be held on Duke's campus in Durham, North Carolina, will allow students to showcase their wall-climbing technology in an international forum and encourage students to network with industry leaders.

DARC's Website

AAAI Grand Challenges

The two AAAI Grand Challenges focus on Human Robot Interaction, with one being a robot attending and delivering a conference talk, the other being operator-interaction challenges in rescue robotics.

Centennial Challenges

The Centennial Challenges are NASA prize contests for non-government funded technological achievements, including robotics, by US citizens.

Robofest

Robofest is an annual robotics competition originated at Lawrence Technological University in 2000 for students in grades 5 to 12. Robofest challenges student teams, to design, build, and program fully autonomous robots. The aim is to promote student mastery of mathematics and science through enjoyable activity. The competition categories in junior and senior age divisions in Robofest are games, creative exhibitions, pentathlon, sumo, and fashion show. The Robofest name is also used by several other organizations worldwide.

Collegiate Robofest

The Collegiate Robofest is also organized by Lawrence Technological University and is open to professionals, hobbyists, college students and advanced high school students. The current competition category is the "Mini Urban Challenge" using a PC-based robot with a camera called L2Bot.

International Robot Olympiad

Robot game for children ages 9 - 17. Split essentially to the standard category (building robot from scratch and solve a problem within 2-3 hours) and the creative category (project based, bring your design, reports, and research and show it - exhibition style). The committee are experts from various universities around the world, with the purpose of promoting innovation and education.

Rat's Life robot programming contest

This contest is organized to promote research results and stimulate further interest in bio-inspired robotics control. The participation to the contest is open to anyone and free of charge. Contestants can download a free version of the Webots software for simulating a robotic scenario where two rat robots compete for survival in a maze-like environment. The developed robot controllers can be transferred in real e-puck robots roaming an interactive LEGO maze. [3] This competition is now widely used for teaching. [4]

ABU RoboCon

Main article: Robocon

An annual robot contest which started in 2002 for university, college and polytechnic students in the Asia-Pacific region. Under a common set of rules, participants compete with their peers from other countries with hand-made robots. This contest aims to create friendship among young people with similar interests, as well as help advance engineering and broadcasting technologies in the region. The event broadcasts in countries/region through ABU member broadcasters.

The contest is hosted by a different broadcaster/country every year.

OFF Road Robotics Competition

The competition is organized by the Robot Association of Finland. The goal is to build a robot which is able to move without human help off road. The competition is held annually at the mid-summer Jämi Fly In air show in Finland. The competition track is randomly selected 10 minutes before competition by the judge, marked with four wooden stick to make a 200 meter track. The track consists of sand roads and fields containing bushes and rocks. The robots must run outside the sticks from start to finish without human assistance as fast as possible. Youtube movies and pictures from the 2007 and 2008 competitions are available.

Defcon Robot Contest (DefconBots)

The DEF CON, world's largest hacker convention hosts a robotic competition called DefconBots. This competition's objective has changed a couple of times. From 2006 to 2008 the goal was to build a autonomous stationary robot to shoot down the targets. Previous competitions included line following and transporting ping-pong balls across the arena. The contest is open to everyone.

See also

PantheROV