Robot competition
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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.
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[edit] 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 2007 a $70,000 winner-take-all prize is offered.
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 (http://www.nal.res.in/mav08/), 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 2007.
[edit] Ground robotic vehicle competitions
The DARPA Grand Challenge is a competition for robotic vehicles to complete an under-200 mile, off-road course in the Mojave Desert. The unclaimed 2004 prize 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 Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition (IGVC) 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.
[edit] 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.
[edit] Other notable annual competitions
[edit] METU Robotics Days
METU Robotics Days organization is hosted by Middle East Technical University Robotics Society since 2002, in Turkey. This is the first robotics organization in Turkey. Line following, sumo wrestling, stair climbing and free categories are included. It has nearly 10.000 visitors each year and improving. It will become international in a few years.
[edit] IEEE Micromouse competition
In Micromouse competitions, small robots try to solve a maze in the fastest time. Micromouse competitions were held in Tampere Finland Technical University around 1983-1985. Professor Yrjo Neuvo was a head of the competitions.
[edit] First competition
Dean Kamen, Founder of FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), created the world's leading high school robotics competition. FIRST provides a varsity-like competitive forum that inspires in young people, their schools and communities 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 FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC), the FIRST Vex Challenge (FVC), the FIRST Lego League (FLL), and Junior FIRST Lego League (JFLL). These four competitions are each geared separately at students aged 14-18, 14-18, 9-14, and 6-9 respectively. In 2005, there were over 100,000 students and 40,000 adult mentors from around the world involved in at least one of FIRST's competitions.
Unlike the Robot sumo wrestling competitions that take place regularly in some venues, or the Battlebots competitions on TV, these competitions include the creation of a robot. For the FLL program, the robots are entirely autonomous; the FVC competition involves separate autonomous and driver control matches; and the FRC competition involves an autonomous period (10 or 15 seconds) followed by a driver control in their matches.
[edit] 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.
[edit] Mobile Autonomous Systems Laboratory competition
The Mobile Autonomous Systems Laboratory (http://maslab.csail.mit.edu) is one of the few college-level vision-based autonomous robotics competition in the world. Conducted by and for MIT undergraduates, this competition 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.
[edit] 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[1]. The 14th Annual Trinity College Fire-Fighting Home Robot Contest will be held on the Trinity campus in Hartford, Connecticut in mid-April this year like in previous years. However, one event is being 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. Check the event website for contest details.
[edit] 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.
[edit] 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.
[edit] Centennial Challenges
The Centennial Challenges are NASA prize contests for non-government funded technological achievements, including robotics, by US citizens.
