Defcon Robot Contest

Last updated

The Defcon Robot Contest was a robotics competition which was held at the annual Defcon computer security conference in Las Vegas.

Contents

History

Defcon 12 (2004)

The first competition was held at Defcon 11 in 2003. The objective was to transport ping pong balls from one corner of an arena to the other. Only Irvine Underground entered a team and they were able to successfully complete the task.

Defcon 13 (2005)

The task this year was to first follow a line around a maze, scooping up ping pong balls along the way, then fire them at cans on a wall at one end of the arena. Two teams entered this year, with the team from Florida winning.

Defcon 14: (2006)

Since the previous contests proved to be too expensive, the Defcon 14 rules were changed to make it easier for the smaller teams to compete. The requirement for battery power was dropped, but the requirement to be fully autonomous was enforced. The goal was to shoot down 1, 2, and 3 inch white targets from 10 feet away. 6 teams entered and all teams were able to shoot down many targets. Team Octopi, a team of four computer science and computer engineering students from The University of Utah won the contest. They shot down 28 targets in 37 seconds.

Defcon 15: (2007)

This year's task was very similar to Defcon 14, with only minor changes. The main change was that targets were no longer infrared (so no special IR camera was required). Also, to make it more exciting, the format was changed from timed match to head-to-head match (double elimination). The winners were Team Octopi again, shooting 24 targets in 16.6 seconds.

Team Octopi's bot has shown significantly better results than other teams (second place was 35.6 seconds, almost twice as slow), so to encourage more people to compete they have promised not to participate in next year's competition.

Defcon 16: (2008)

This year's rules were exactly the same as previous years. First place was taken by Team Yozhik, shooting 24 targets in 15.7 seconds. This was the first time that team participated in DefconBots competition. Before that, the team took first place in RoboGames 2008 competition in San Francisco.

The contest's organizer, Kallahar, has stated that next year's competition will be in a different format. One reason for that was the high complexity of building a shooting robot—winning teams used expensive parts like industrial AC servo motors, commercial AC/micro-stepping controllers and high precision Harmonic drive gearboxes. While the teams did not pay the full price for them (because of eBay or corporate donations), other teams would have to spend large amounts of money to replicate the winning designs.

Prizes

Each year the prizes change, but the real prize is the respect earned. The prizes do not even come close to covering the cost of building the bot.

Since Defcon 14, the prize includes Black Badge, which gives lifetime unlimited entry to all future Defcons.

Related Research Articles

DEF CON is a hacker convention held annually in Las Vegas, Nevada. The first DEF CON took place in June 1993 and today many attendees at DEF CON include computer security professionals, journalists, lawyers, federal government employees, security researchers, students, and hackers with a general interest in software, computer architecture, hardware modification, conference badges, and anything else that can be "hacked". The event consists of several tracks of speakers about computer- and hacking-related subjects, as well as cyber-security challenges and competitions. Contests held during the event are extremely varied, and can range from creating the longest Wi-Fi connection to finding the most effective way to cool a beer in the Nevada heat.

<i>BattleBots</i> American robot combat television series

BattleBots is an American robot combat television series. The show was an adaptation of the British show Robot Wars, in which competitors design and operate remote-controlled armed and armored machines designed to fight in an arena combat elimination tournament. For five seasons, BattleBots aired on the American Comedy Central and was hosted by Bil Dwyer, Sean Salisbury, and Tim Green. Comedy Central's first season premiered on August 23, 2000, and its fifth and last season ended on December 21, 2002. The show was in hiatus until it was revived on ABC in 2015.

The Loebner Prize was an annual competition in artificial intelligence that awards prizes to the computer programs considered by the judges to be the most human-like. The prize is reported as defunct since 2020. The format of the competition was that of a standard Turing test. In each round, a human judge simultaneously holds textual conversations with a computer program and a human being via computer. Based upon the responses, the judge must decide which is which.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Beer pong</span> Drinking game involving ping pong balls

Beer pong, also known as Beirut, is a drinking game in which players throw a ping pong ball across a table with the intent of landing the ball in a cup of beer on the other end. The game typically consists of opposing teams of two or more players per side with 6 or 10 cups set up in a triangle formation on each side. Each team then takes turns attempting to throw ping pong balls into the opponent's cups. If a ball lands in a cup, the contents of that cup are consumed by the other team and the cup is removed from the table. The first team to eliminate all of the opponent's cups is the winner.

A*mazing was an Australian children's television game show that aired between 16 May 1994 until 1998 on the Seven Network. It was famous for a relatively large and elaborate maze/obstacle course that was part of the show's studio set. A*mazing was hosted by James Sherry for the entire run of the series. A*mazing was produced at Channel 7 in Brisbane from 1994–1996 and then at Channel 7 in Perth from 1997–1998.

The National Basketball Association All-Star Weekend is a weekend festival held every February during the middle of the NBA regular season that consists of a variety of basketball events, exhibitions, and performances culminating in the NBA All-Star Game held on Sunday night. No regular season games are held during this period, which is also known as the All-Star break. It is right after the trade deadline.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aim High</span>

Aim High was the 2006 game for the FIRST Robotics Competition. The competition involved teams competing to gain points by delivering balls into goals and positioning their robots in certain positions on the playing field. The teams took it in turn to provide defense and attack.

Illinois Instant Riches is a lottery game show airing in the state of Illinois, as well as nationally on Chicago-based Superstation WGN-TV. The show was hosted by Mark Goodman, with Linda Kollmeyer as his co-host and Bill Barber as announcer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">International Aerial Robotics Competition</span> University-based robotics competition

The International Aerial Robotics Competition (IARC) began in 1991 on the campus of the Georgia Institute of Technology and is the longest running university-based robotics competition in the world. Since 1991, collegiate teams with the backing of industry and government have fielded autonomous flying robots in an attempt to perform missions requiring robotic behaviors never before exhibited by a flying machine. In 1990, the term “aerial robotics” was coined by competition creator Robert Michelson to describe a new class of small highly intelligent flying machines. The successive years of competition saw these aerial robots grow in their capabilities from vehicles that could at first barely maintain themselves in the air, to the most recent automatons which are self-stable, self-navigating, and able to interact with their environment—especially objects on the ground.

<i>Ping Pong</i> (2002 film) 2002 Japanese sports film by Fumihiko Sori

Ping Pong is a 2002 sports film directed by Japanese filmmaker Fumihiko Sori. It is based on Taiyō Matsumoto's manga of the same name and is about the friendship between two high school table tennis players.

Robotix is an annual robotics and programming event that is organised by the Technology Robotix Society at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur. It is held during Kshitij, the institute's annual techno-management festival. Participation is open to college students. The event gives contestants an opportunity to showcase their talents in the fields of mechanical robotics, autonomous robotics and programming.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">FIRST Tech Challenge</span> Robotics competition

FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC), formerly known as FIRST Vex Challenge, is a robotics competition for students in grades 7–12 to compete head to head, by designing, building, and programming a robot to compete in an alliance format against other teams. FIRST Tech Challenge is the one of the four major robotics programs organized by FIRST, which its other three programs include FIRST Lego League Explore, FIRST Lego League Challenge, and FIRST Robotics Competition.

There are a number of competitions and prizes to promote research in artificial intelligence.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Computer game bot Turing test</span>

The computer game bot Turing test is a variant of the Turing test, where a human judge viewing and interacting with a virtual world must distinguish between other humans and video game bots, both interacting with the same virtual world. This variant was first proposed in 2008 by Associate Professor Philip Hingston of Edith Cowan University, and implemented through a tournament called the 2K BotPrize.

There are sporting events held in United Arab Emirates.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">TOSY</span>

TOSY Robotics specializes in designing and manufacturing robots and smart toys. The most famous products from TOSY Robotics are TOPIO Robot, DiscoRobo, TOOP and AFO.

Breakaway is the game for the 2010 FIRST Robotics Competition, announced on January 9, 2010. Robots direct soccer balls into goals, traverse "bumps" in the field, suspend themselves and each other on towers, and/or go through a tunnel located in the center of the field.

SMK Bukit Mewah (SMRJL) is a public secondary school situated in Jalan Tok Ungku, Seremban, in Malaysia. The school has approximately 129 teachers and a student body of 2546 students.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Student Robotics</span>

Student Robotics is a registered charity that runs an annual robotics competition for teams of 16 to 19 year-olds. The charity aims to foster a world where engineering and artificial intelligence is accessible to young people with a stated mission "to bring the excitement of engineering and the challenge of coding to young people through robotics". The competition is free to enter and teams are provided with all of the core electronics that they need to build a robot. To encourage creative and ingenious solutions to problems, constraints on design are kept to a minimum, and the students can build and fashion their robots with any materials they choose; this results in a wide range of quirky, original robots. The robots must operate autonomously; once they are switched on to compete no interference from the team is allowed.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">RoboMaster</span> Annual intercollegiate robot competition

RoboMaster is an annual intercollegiate robot competition held in Shenzhen, Guangdong, China, founded and hosted by the drone tech giant DJI. First started in 2015, it is the brainchild of DJI's founder and CEO Frank Wang, and jointly sponsored by the Communist Youth League Central Committee, the All-China Students' Federation (ACSF) and the Shenzhen City Government. It is the first shooting sport-style robotics competition in China.