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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."
There will be competition for combat and non-combat robots
Does it disturb anyone how much effort is put into building robots designed for distruction? I mean I understand building robots that solve puzzles, and robots that overcome obstacles, but the idea of designing robots primarily for violence kind of bothers me.
Maybe this is a little off topic, but it's an interesting thing to think about.
Entrance is free for children under 7.
Sure.. get the young kids used to seeing robots all over the place so they'll be taken by suprise when SkyNet launces its attack. whoops, my tinfoil hat was slipping there, sorry..
Trolling is a art,
Well... :D
This year in portugal we'll host RoboCup 2004 aswell
Paulo Soska
in San Francisco, California
Will the governor be taking part too?
Free XBox, PS2
The fact that Nature is bringing us this robot story?
MmMmmmm . . . irony.
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One event called Ribbon Climber, in which robots race up a carbon-fibre ribbon, was designed to inspire 'space elevator' technology that might one day lift satellites into orbit.
It's nice to see they added this event in to draw a little more attention to the space elevator. I personally would rather build a robot to compete in that competition than the fighting ones. It may be a little easier, plus, you're helping towards a cause that would benifit us all, not building a robot purely to smash other things (which is still pretty cool).
..shotput event canceled due to fears for viewer's safety
...Human Wars. Robots of superior intelligence build highly aggressive, hugely muscular humans to beat the crap out of one another on RoboTV. Eventually they will evolve to become more intelligent than their creators, and we'll go full circle...maybe :P
http://www.robolympics.net/photos/susan_r2.jpg
they're lookin pretty lifelike...
http://www.robolympics.net/photos/blender.jpg
*snicker*
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.
"hehe, website" - Homer Simpson
I remember going to 'The First Robot Olympics' in Glasgow, Scotland in 1988/89, still have the Tshirt somewhere. /. at the moment.
A couple of years later I was asked to promote another robot event, run by the same people, but definitely not anything to do with the olympics, as the IOC is very protective about the word Olympics, not surprising given some of the other discussions on
So my suspicion is that the name will have some problems.
In conclusion, my feelings are it's not the first, and it's not the Olympics, but apart from that it's fine.
Shame I can't afford to go over there.
no time, no sig
These fight competition with robots are getting boring. We all know the bot with the lowest gravity, widest wheel, flatest body always win.
We need some more creativity. Like a robot that makes coffee while in battle. Or a robot that talks trash.
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.
Is this going to be like that DARPA road race, where Wired did a 50-page color article on it, and then on race day none of the robots are able to make it as far as a stray shopping cart in a windy parking lot?
I'm thinking the event will be named something else by the time it becomes the 2nd Annual, since the US Olympic Committee has told them they can't use Olympics in their name.
When I was in high school, we saw the name of the Olympics of the Mind program changed to "Odyssey of the Mind" for the same reason.
What does it mean to wake out of a dream
and be wearing someone else's shorts?
BNL, Born on a Pirate Ship (1998)
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.
Yeah, pollinating is about as close as any of these folks will ever get to biological procreation.
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.
Robocup is the real world cup of robot soccer, about 5 years in the running. The 2004 American Open is happening in late April, and it will supposedly be open to the public. And for the really hardcore fans, there's Robocup 2004 in Portugal. See ya there ;) Failing that, you should at least watch a match (4-legged league).
It's not a robot if it's remote controlled. It's an RC toy. A robot should be autonomous and use AI to control itself. That's a totally different technological problem.
It looks like the Stormtroopers learned their lesson about cuteness after dealing with the Ewoks. That AIBO had better talk or it is gonna be one fucked up little puppy.
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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
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Congratulations, you've passed the test! Though your sarcasm-detector seems to have failed catastrophically.
Nothing says "unprofessional job" like wrinkles in your duct tape.
Ok, the cost isn't such a great boast. But steel wedges are not the winningest designs, certainly not in my experience. I haven't even seen such a design on the UK robot circuit for years.
Working steel isn't a particularly challenging job but designing the chassis certainly is. One needs to design a drive train which can support a 100kg robot and withstand other 100kg robots falling on it, sometimes from several metres in the air.
Getting good radio reception inside a steel shell with several large electric motors and no protruding aerials is challenging.
Controlling motors which draw hundreds of amps is challenging.
Designing weapons which will cut through 5mm plate steel is challenging, although many exist.
Doing all this while keeping the competition safe for roboteers and audiences is very challenging.
Identifying targets and not falling down stairs certainly is challenging, no doubt about that. But please don't write off ROV builders' efforts as "remote-controlled cars".