This article is about events that substantially involve non-combat based competition and self-automation. For combat based competition between typically remote controlled vehicles, see Robot combat.
NimbRo-OP2X Humanoid Soccer Robot at RoboCup 2018 in Montreal
A robot competition is an event where the abilities and characteristics of robots may be tested and assessed. Usually, they have to outperform other robots in order to win the competition. Many competitions are for schools, but several competitions with professional and hobbyist participants also exist.
Robotic competitions have been organized since the 1970s and 1980s. In 1979 a Micromouse competition was organized by the IEEE as shown in the Spectrum magazine.[2]
Although it is hard to pinpoint the first robotic competition, two events are well known for their longevity: the All Japan Sumo in Japan, and the Trinity College International Fire Fighting Robot Contest.[3]
Two contemporary events are Robocup and Robo One. Companies like Lego and VEX have also developed branded events, which they call leagues, although they function more like individual cups in regional qualifiers with finals.
There is some controversy about whether university-specific challenges should be considered competitions or workshops. The general trend is to open competitions to the public, to prevent nepotism and improve the quality of the competing robots.
Some organizations have tried to standardize robotics competition through the introduction of full-fledged leagues with a standard calendar, but the model has worked only in some countries, such as Spain, where the National League was founded in 2008 and still functioning.[4]
Types of competitions
There are many types of robot competitions, making it hard to compare them or establish standards for them. For example:
Publicly popular, vs. popular with competitors
Indoors vs. outdoors
Branded materials (LEGO or VEX) vs. open materials
Minors/students, vs. professionals/clubs
Itinerant (Robocup) vs. fixed-location (All Japan Sumo)
Nature of movement: humanoid, wheeled, aerial, aquatic, underwater, etc.
Competitions
Major competitions and organizations
All these competitions are indoors, itinerant in their location and showcase different categories. The competitions in this listing have a yearly recurrent major impact in their locations with a huge national impact or an international significant reach. Map in reference [5]
The following events appear to be inactive or have no reference that show them to be active.
OFF Road Robotics Competition
This 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.[14][15] The competition track is randomly selected 10 minutes before competition by the judge, marked with four wooden sticks 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.[16]
International Autonomous Robot Racing Challenge (IARRC)
Student teams from around the world compete in an outdoor racing competition, where small-scale robots race against other robots to the finish line, without any human guidance or control. Their skills are put to the test in a static judging event, a drag race and a circuit race event, where the vehicles navigate around obstacles and obey the traffic rules. These robots are finding their way into applications such as space exploration, mining, search and rescue, remote sensing and automotive inspection.
Robot Racing is an effort to promote research in autonomous mobile robotics technology. The competition provides students with engineering design challenges, including components of mechanical, computer, control software, and system integration. Students work together to design and build robotic vehicles that can navigate twisting, obstacle-filled courses without any human guidance or control.
Mobile Autonomous Systems Laboratory competition (Maslab)
The Mobile Autonomous Systems Laboratory, or Maslab, 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 Ubuntu Linux and run on an independent OrcBoard platform that facilitates sensor-hardware additions and recognition.
Flying Donkey Challenge
The Flying Donkey Challenge is an escalating series of sub-challenges held annually in Africa with a focus on lifting cargo. The initial challenge was scheduled to take place in Kenya in November 2014 with four enabling technology and design sub-challenges and three non-technical challenges.[17][18]
Micro Air Vehicle Events
A series of micro air vehicle (MAV) events have been sponsored by organizations including the University of Florida, the U.S. Army, French DGA, Indian Ministry of Defense, and others. For example, the International Micro Air Vehicle conferences (IMAVs) always include competitions in which capabilities are demonstrated and missions are performed. The goal of most competitions is to stimulate research on full autonomy of the micro air vehicles. Prizes range up to an aggregate value of $600,000 in 2008.
UBBOTS competition
UBBOTS is an annual robot exhibition taking place at Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania.[19] The teams have to create a robot that helps humans and simplify their life.
Sakarya University Robotics Competition (SAURO) is a robotics competition hosted by Sakarya University since 2009. The organization is open to undergraduates, graduates and high school students. The competition is discontinued.
The first Robot Olympics took place in Glasgow Scotland on September 27–28, 1990. The event was run by The Turing Institute at the Sports Centre at the University of Strathclyde. It featured 68 robots competing in a range of sporting events. The robots were from 12 different countries and involved over 2,500 visitors over the two-day period. The competition is discontinued.
A humanoid robot is a robot resembling the human body in shape. The design may be for functional purposes, such as interacting with human tools and environments, for experimental purposes, such as the study of bipedal locomotion, or for other purposes. In general, humanoid robots have a torso, a head, two arms, and two legs, though some humanoid robots may replicate only part of the body. Androids are humanoid robots built to aesthetically resemble humans.
Micromouse is an event where small robotic mice compete to solve a 16×16 maze. It began in the late 1970s. Events are held worldwide, and are most popular in the UK, U.S., Japan, Singapore, India, South Korea and becoming popular in subcontinent countries such as Sri Lanka.
RoboCup is an annual international robotics competition founded in 1996 by a group of university professors. The aim of the competition is to promote robotics and AI research by offering a publicly appealing – but formidable – challenge.
The DARPA Grand Challenge is a prize competition for American autonomous vehicles, funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the most prominent research organization of the United States Department of Defense. Congress has authorized DARPA to award cash prizes to further DARPA's mission to sponsor revolutionary, high-payoff research that bridges the gap between fundamental discoveries and military use. The initial DARPA Grand Challenge in 2004 was created to spur the development of technologies needed to create the first fully autonomous ground vehicles capable of completing a substantial off-road course within a limited time. The third event, the DARPA Urban Challenge in 2007, extended the initial Challenge to autonomous operation in a mock urban environment. The 2012 DARPA Robotics Challenge, focused on autonomous emergency-maintenance robots, and new Challenges are still being conceived. The DARPA Subterranean Challenge was tasked with building robotic teams to autonomously map, navigate, and search subterranean environments. Such teams could be useful in exploring hazardous areas and in search and rescue.
Swarm robotics is an approach to the coordination of multiple robots as a system which consist of large numbers of mostly simple physical robots. In a robot swarm, the collective behavior of the robots results from local interactions between the robots and between the robots and the environment in which they act. It is supposed that a desired collective behavior emerges from the interactions between the robots and interactions of robots with the environment. This idea emerged on the field of artificial swarm intelligence, as well as the studies of insects, ants and other fields in nature, where swarm behaviour occurs.
RoboCup Junior (RCJ), sometimes stylised RobocupJunior, is a division of RoboCup, a not-for-profit robotics organisation. It focuses on education and aims to introduce the larger goals of the RoboCup project to primary and secondary school aged children. Participants compete in one of three main leagues: Soccer, Rescue or Dance. Dance Theatre also exists as a sub-league of Dance, and Premier Rescue is part of the competition in Australia and New Zealand.
A mobile robot is an automatic machine that is capable of locomotion. Mobile robotics is usually considered to be a subfield of robotics and information engineering.
The International Aerial Robotics Competition (IARC) is a university-based robotics competition held on the campus of the Georgia Institute of Technology. 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 not previously exhibited by a flying machine. The term “aerial robotics” was coined by competition creator Robert Michelson in 1990 to describe a new class of small highly intelligent flying machines. Successive years of competition saw these aerial robots grow from vehicles that could barely maintain themselves in the air, to automatons which are self-stable, self-navigating, and able to interact with their environment.
The Federation of International Robot-soccer Association [sic] (FIRA) is an international organisation organising competitive soccer – usually 5-a-side – competitions between autonomous robots.
As one of the founding leagues of the international RoboCup initiative, the RoboCup Middle Size League (MSL) robot soccer competition has been organised from 1997 onwards. On an indoor soccer field, with goals of reduced size, teams of five fully autonomous soccer playing robots compete against one another. No human intervention is allowed during a match, except to take robots on or from the field. Although limitations with respect to maximum size and weight are in place, teams are completely free to design both hardware and software.
RoboGames is an annual robot contest held in San Mateo, California. The last RoboGames was held April 6-9, 2023 in Pleasanton, California, having been on hiatus since the previous event in April 2018.
A soccer robot is a specialized autonomous robot and mobile robot that is used to play variants of soccer.
Robofest is an autonomous robotics competition for 4th - 12th graders. It is similar to FIRST Lego League (FLL), but while FLL limits the student's robots to Lego Mindstorms robots, Robofest allows the student to use any robotics system, parts, materials, or even custom electronics, in some of the events. Note that FLL students are required to use parts manufactured by Lego only, preventing the use of such aids as string or glue. Another important difference is that Robofest games have UTF components. Students must solve the unveiled tasks and factors within 30 minutes work-time without external help. Lawrence Tech's Robofest was founded by Computer Science Professor Dr. Chan-Jin Chung in 1999–2000 academic year and is sponsored by Lawrence Technological University and other sponsors. LTU's Robofest is also held internationally, in countries including Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, Ecuador, Egypt, Ethiopia, England, France, Ghana, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Kenya, Lebanon, Macau, Malawi, Mexico, Morocco, Nigeria, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Taiwan, Jordan, and UAE. Teams who win their regional event are welcome to participate at the worldwide tournament held at Lawrence Technological University in Michigan. ROBOFEST is a registered trademark of Lawrence Technological University. Robofest is one of the largest University led robotics competitions in the world for pre college students.
There are a number of competitions and prizes to promote research in artificial intelligence.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to robotics:
The RoboCup Standard Platform League (SPL) is one of several leagues within RoboCup, an international competition with autonomous robotic soccer matches as the main event.
The DelFly is a fully controllable camera-equipped flapping wing Micro Air Vehicle or Ornithopter developed at the Micro Air Vehicle Lab of the Delft University of TechnologyArchived 2019-10-19 at the Wayback Machine in collaboration with Wageningen University.
The Marquette University Humanoid Engineering & Intelligent Robotics (HEIR) Lab was a robotics lab in Marquette University's College of Engineering.
VEX Robotics is a robotics program for elementary through university students and a subset of Innovation First International. The VEX Robotics competitions and programs are managed by the Robotics Education & Competition Foundation (RECF). In April 2018, VEX Robotics Competition was named the largest robotics competition in the world by Guinness World Records.
NimbRo is the robot competition team of the Autonomous Intelligent Systems group of University of Bonn, Germany. It was founded in 2004 at the University of Freiburg, Germany.
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