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Robotour — robotika.cz outdoor delivery challenge
Robotour — robotika.cz outdoor delivery challenge, is originally Czech
contest of autonomous robots navigating on paved park roads. Robots carrying
payload (five liter barrel) get extra points. The contest is annual on falls.
The first year was in 2006 in Prague, park Stromovka. Next contest will be on
18th of September 2010 in Slovakia/Bratislava.
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Fieldrobot — navigation in maize
Field Robot Event is outdoor contest of autonomous robots. Motivation is from
agriculture while the origin is rather academic. The task for robots is to
quickly navigate in a real maize field without damage of plants. The contest is
international and travel around Europe. The next place is Braunschweig/Germany
and date 11th-13th June 2010.
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Robotem rovně — straight robot motion
Contest „robot, go straight” organize Radioklub Písek since 2009. The task
seems to be easy at first sight: go with the robot as far as possible on
straight park road (Palackého sady, Písek). In reality even this task is
relatively difficult. Compete can even small cars (mostly modified toys)
without sensors in separate category. We highly recommend this contest to teams
who think about participation in Robotour or other
outdoor contests.
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ELROB — The European Robot Trial
ELROB is not contest with winners and losers but rather demonstration of
robots. It was probably a reaction to successful American Grand Challenge, but
the motivations could different. Robots are presented in various categories and
they are mostly teleoperated. Moreover there alternate military and civil
years. In 2010 it will be military ELROB in Germany/Hammelburg near Wurzburg
(17th-20th May 2010).
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Eurobot — European Robotics Cup
Eurobot is originally French contest of autonomous robots. The theme and detail
rules change every year, but there are several common attributes: the play
field is approximately 3x2 meters, two teams compete against each other and the
time limit is 90 seconds. There are national and international rounds. The
nearest international is on 26th-30th May 2010 in Switzerland/Rapperswil-Jona,
and the foregoing Czech round is on 1st May 2010 in Prague.
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Istrobot — tracker, micromouse, free style
Istrobot is Slovak contest, which takes place annually in spring (March/April)
in Bratislava. There are three categories: tracker (line following with
various traps like tunnel, interruption or brick obstacle), micromouse
(navigation in large maze) and finally free style for various robot
demonstrations. The nearest contest will be on 17th April 2010.
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Robot Challenge — contest for all ages
Robot Challenge is Austrian contest of autonomous robots, which takes place
annually at the beginning of spring in Vienna. It is possible to compete in may
categories from parallel slalom (line followers), puck collect, sumo of various
sizes to free style and sprint of humanoid robots. Registration if free of
charge and there is no age restriction (to be precise it is 9 to 99 years).
The nearest date is 20th-21st March 2010.
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Grand Challenge — robots in the army
The American DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) announced in
2002 big challenge for ground autonomous vehicles. The goal was to
self-navigate hundreds of miles from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. In 2004 nobody
made it so the original price (one million dollars) was doubled. In 2007 there
was also Urban Challenge (navigation in a small army town), but it was probably
the last contest of this series.
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Webots — contest of simulated robots on Web
The Swiss company Cyberbotics organize once a while a contest of control
programs in its Webots simulator. The last years contests required programming
language Java, but the pay-off was a possibility to watch matches on-line. Even
this was primarily advertisement, it was possible to solve interesting tasks in
this free Webots contest edition.
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Rescue — contest of rescue robots
Robocup is well known mostly due to the robotics soccer and medialized goal to
beat human world champions to year 2050. There is also a category Rescue
with motivation to help in natural disasters. Robots are mostly teleoperated
and their task is to find in model collapsed house human victims (figurines).
The contest is annual but used to have quite high registration fee (740 EURO in
2003).
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Cleaning — contest of autonomous cleaning robots
In 2002 prof. Erwin Prassler and Martin Hagele from Fraunhofer Institut
organized international contest of cleaning robots. The contest took place in
Switzerland and it was a part of IROS 2002 conference. There was category of
window cleaning, floor cleaning and ideas for household robots. Unfortunately
this was also the last year because promises of sponsors were not fulfilled.
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