The ROBOlympic Games

Roland Piquepaille writes "The first International Robot Games, or ROBOlympics, organized by the Robotics Society of America, will take place on March 20th and 21st, 2004 in San Francisco, California. There will be competition for combat and non-combat robots, a World Cup Soccer game, and even a robo-triathlon. More than 400 robots are registered for this robotics competition. And the winners will receive hard cash. Nature tells us the story in 'Robolympics contestants shoot for gold.' More details and references are available in this overview which also includes a very nice photo of two robots, the larger one either fixing or rocking the smaller one. And for your information, ROBOlympics is not sold out. So if you are near San Francisco, it's still time to buy tickets. They cost $15 to $25. Entrance is free for children under 7."

Comments

Re:Combat robots

[scumbucket]

I was looking at the sponsors list and was surprised NOT to see DARPA there. You would think they would be interested in combat robots.........

The Brits already did it.

[Enygma42]

There was a Techno Games held in England last year. It was really cool cause it wasn't just bots kicking the crap out of each other. They had events such as high-jump, long jump, rope climbing, two-wheeled races, soccer, swimming, rocket-powered races, relay and more.

Some of the bots where truly amazing, especially the rope-climbing ones. I'm not sure if it'll be on this year though, hopefully some of the bots will enter in the ROBOlympics.

My combat robot is entered...

[openSoar]

i joined a local course for robot building and the timing worked out perfectly for the robolympics so we entered it in the 12lb combat class - it's going to get creamed in the first round - i started a blog that documented the build progress but i'm too scared to post it here - i only have a small bandwidth quota :) - here is a picture though - that's a stool underneath - it's actually very flat for scooping under other bots and can spin rapidly - still going to be decimated in the first 30 seconds though.

Re:The are all the same as well

[Nicolas Pillot]

Maybe you can think to it as a kind of darwinism. As you can see it in other competitions (for example E=M6 and which does not aim at combat), basicly you build a robot which applies one (or many) solution to a given problem. He has to adapt himself to the problem, and in fact, YOU have to do the adaptation, at least in his physical design. Then when you ar building the AI, you can have him adapt to different strategies. But you can really think that for the problem you are concerned, there is one or two "better" strategies, which will surely get better results. And i think it is true, even if i'd prefer seing clever, fun, unusual strategies get more success. The best wins and rules the world, isn't it this way for robots ? The best.

Re:Combat robots

[strateego]

While at home, you could have such a robot feed the dog, clean the house, watch the kids....etc.

Does anyone else just find this frightening. I'm mean the TV does enough to baysit kids, but to just drop off kids with the robot. What is wrong with you man?

FIRST Robotics

[rmohr02]

I'm a mentor for a FIRST Robotics team in Dublin, OH. The robot must score points either through grabbing a bar that's 10 feet in the air (the max height of the robot is 5ft), or pushing kickballs into a bin from which human players can pick them up and shoot them. It may not sound as impressive as the robots in the ROBOlympics, but we had six weeks from the time we learned of this year's goal to when our robot had to be done.

If you're interested in the ROBOlympics but for whatever reason can't travel to it, there should be a FIRST Regional Event near you (this weekend there's one in Brentwood, NY, Hartford, CT, Sacramento, CA, Duluth, GA, Annapolis, MD, and Detroit, MI). There's more for the next several weekends as well. There's also a Championship Event in Atlanta from April 15-17.

Re:Combat robots

[DigiShaman]

I didn't mean for that comment to come across as "dump the kids far away from my parental responsibilities". But, I do see rebotics being a good thing for the interaction with children. Rather then have kids sit in front of a TV and veg out, I would rather have them play sports or anything involving physical activity with another playmate...even if that playmate isn't a real human.

I'm sure in my lifetime, kids will be able to play soccer or baseball in teams of "Humans vs Robots". The future should be interesting.

Olympiad

[themusicgod1]

Why don't we just start letting robots* compete in the Olympics? It would make the Olympics back into the frothing Nationalist and Racist entertainment they were to begin with, before the media corporations got their hands on it. Although to do so with a different bent - instead of nazi aryans vs. the world(1936 Berlin) or whatever, it would be Humanity vs it's creations: the machines.

I think when you can have a robot that not only can run the triathalon, but can navigate a random trail without someone on remote control, and do so in timed trials against humans, then and only then will this be significant.

*Obviously there must be some restriction on what a "robot" should be. how about, independant, and intelligent in some way? how about the robot has to be designed by machines(evolution processes, etc)?

this should make very clear which sports are trivial and which are not, (ie, Pole Vault will be difficult, whereas Javelin throw will not be.) when I see a humanoid robot run and throw himself 3000 feet into the air so they can just happen to fall over a bar, and then not destroy themselves upon landing...I'll start watching the olympics, at least until the commercialism involved drives me away again.

How about wrestling? A machine that can within the rules of wrestling pin a human being(perhaps with restriction that it must be humanoid,2 arms 2 legs and a head)? Or perhaps there will be entirely new sports gained from this! When robots begin to play soccer, then some sort of magnet-supported free-fall soccer might be more interesting, etc.

And hell, we could use that to get the companies out in the forefront as far as sponsorship goes. It's about time we had the Timex Ironman Triathalon team and the GM Wrestling team. We could have the following as a potential outcome:
GOLD: USA
SILVER: WALMART ROBOTICS
BRONZE: CANADA
etc