Robotour Marathon is a new discipline starting in season 2017/18. There are several motivations for this new challenge, where probably the first one is to improve level of testing = level of robot realiability in Robotour contest. Moreover it provides comparison of different teams around the whole world over the year. (Update 18/4: Cogito 903m)

The 13th year of Robotour contest for autonomous outdoor robots will take place in Lednice/Czech Republic. There will be several changes in the rules this year: the automatic loading and unloading will be no longer for extra points, QR-codes will be introduced to specify next location and robot can request preliminary task termination to avoid penalty for leaving the road. The autonomous, service and semi-autonomous zones remain the same as last year. When and where? Lednice, 15th September 2018. (Update 22/3/2018 - QR code format change)

OSGAR is a long term project which will probably incorporate more than one robotic platform in the future. The project started in 2014 when we decided to modify school garden tractor John Deere X300R into autonomous robot. The project is carried on in cooperation with the Czech University of Life Science Prague. Blog update: 6/12 — Spider3 finally autonomously moved!

MYR2017 is outdoor contest for autonomous robots organized by French company Naio Technologies. The participants have to first demonstrate that they are able to control Naio robot in Simulatoz (yes, Z is correct) provided by the company. Then only the best teams can run their code on the real robot. The first prize is 1000 EUR in each category (simulation, real navigation and free style). Blog update: 1/12 — Summary

On Sunday there is always a workshop of all teams after the contest. They share their findings what worked and what did not, what is in reality inside of their smart robots, how they liked the new rules etc. This year we were recording so although it is not the top quality you can see and hear what was presented.

Twelfth year of Robotour contest introduced new „delivery” rules, which we had to tweak a little bit on the way to Žilina and also during the competition. After that the satisfaction was both on the side of teams as well as organizers. And who managed the latest task the best? The team which tested the most … Czech/Swiss team Cogito! (Update 20/9: added new links and videos)

There are 15 registered teams for Robotour 2017 which will take place in Slovakia (Žilina) on 16th of September 2017. The list is an interesting mixture of old, new and „renovated” teams, for which was the far contest location the last blocking point. We can again look forward to see participants from Czech Republic, Germany, Poland and Switzerland.

Another „SICK Robot Day” is over. This time two robots had to place cubes in the field loaded with RFID chips in 5x5 meter bit „chess” area. Once the cubes were placed then they become obstacle and future collisions were penalized. So how it went?

The 11th year of Robotour contest was the wettest. It rained permanently all day. This was not only challenge for the sensors and electronics, but also for the teams themselves. Never the less there were 12 robots on the start accepting the challenge in heavy rain (and wind too). Istrobotics with more than 600 points was the clear winner …

There are 14 teams registered for Robotour 2016 in Deggendorf Germany. That is nice start of the second contest decade . Also note, that Robotour is no longer Czech domain — there are 5 teams from Germany, only 4 teams from Czech republic, 2 from Poland, 2 from Slovakia and 1 from Switzerland. In particular I am pleased that there are 5 new teams and even old teams upgraded their robots, sensors, software …

The 11th year of Robotour contest of autonomous outdoor robots will take place in Germany — the last unvisited neighbour of the origin country. New are extra bonus points for automatic payload loading at start position and unloading at goal position. Moreover some contestants could be excited about lower payload requirements when automatic loading is used. Note, that this is an optional feature and thus robots from previous years can be used without any modification. The contest will take place on 17th September 2016 in Deggendorf as part of „Czech-Bavarian week”.

The second year of the contest „Tour the Stairs” will take place on Saturday 28th November 2015. The robots could climb the stairs up and down this year to make it more interesting for last year participants. The location is the same: NTK Galery in Prague, Dejvice. UPDATE: 7/1 — minivideo