Robotex 2015

Promoting the fields of enginieering

Estonia’s biggest robotics challenge will meet record number of participants. Science and education are main important things in a developing society, said United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, when visiting Tallinn and Robotex robotics challenge two years ago. The visit of such an important person indicated, that robotics is one of the main industrial spheres of future and concerns everyone. Estonia’s most important robotics event 2015 will be the biggest of it´s history.

International robotics challenge Robotex 2015 will be held in the beginning of December, but as robots are getting more and more complicated, challenges are more difficult and competition more tight, then all teams must prepare earlier than usual. Robotex started 15 years ago. At that time preparation took only few weeks before competition. Students and other participants started to build robots for competition as early as in the beginning of a school year, some time in September. That´s not enough now. Some robots participate at Robotex for years and team members improve these every year to be more complicated, precise and faster. „They can´t keep vacation at summer time, if they want to claim some great awards, what are bigger than ever this year, too,“ said event´s project leader Marti Arak. “They have to prepare and build new robots earlier.” This means more preparations and development to Robotex organizing team, too.

Robotics as sports events

At first, participants must know very exact competition rules as early as possible to build their new powerful robots. There will be some new contests this year, but good old competitions took place as every year, too. Robotex will have 17 different competitions for robots this year. Old ones are: Mini Sumo, LEGO Sumo, 3 kg Sumo, iRobot Sumo, LEGO Line Following, Line Following, Football, 2 vs 2 Football, NAO Football, Maze Solving, Folkrace and ICD Grand Challenge. The most popular and some of the oldest are Sumo and Football contests. Building a Sumo robot is part of some robotics lessons at school. This competition means that there are two robots inside a circle and they try to move contestant out of circle. Who stays inside the circle is a winner. Another popular challenge is football one-vs-one. Two robots playing football are trying to shoot all small footballs to competitor´s gate and defence own gate. The winner are the team and robot who shot the most goals.

These robots were quite simple at the beginning, but developed quickly to intelligent, fast tracking and analysing robots who can discover surroundings by camera, lasers and radars to determine enemy position and to find the best strategy to win. Most spectacular competitions were humanoid robots playing football last year. This kind of robots are developing very fast, because humanoid robots are much more complicated than robots, who move around by wheels.

New challenger this year

2015 there will be some new competitions starting first time in the history of Robotex this year. These are Micro Sumo, Following the line with obstacles, Freestyle, Pass the City and Water Rally. Micro Sumo means robots are very small: not more than 100 g, dimensions not more than 5 x 5 x 5 cm and infrared sensor must be on top of machine, not on side or below. Following the line means that robots must follow a black line on white surface as fast as possible. Following with obstacles means that robot must go around obstacle and find the line again to continue the journey. Obstacles are walls, swings, hills and knots.

Pass the City is for traffic robots: they must see traffic lights, traffic signs and follow the rules of traffic before parking to a parking lot on the other side of artificial city landscape. This is one of the most complicated tasks robots must go through and avery important part of robotics today: self-driving vehicles are coming within few years and students or engineers must know the problems of building this kind of vehicles.

The biggest prize funds are for ICD Grand Challenge. This is a very important robotics field, too: a rescue robot has to save five castaways from a sinking ship and move them to a safe location within 30 seconds.

A big chance for start-ups

There were 835 robotics enthusiasts and 361 robots at contest last year. It was the biggest competition in Robotex history. Robotex had about 11 000 visitors in three days. But competitions of robots are not the only things of Robotex fest. There are many technology exhibitions, workshops, art competitions and seminars during the event. Many of Estonian start-up’s are presenting their hardware, students and companies show their developments and products. Some important business contracts are born here, too.

But what is Robotex? Robotex is a project particularly aimed at young people to promote the fields of engineering. Its main goal is to raise the interest of young people in technology education. This would result in a sustainable number of successful interdisciplinary (mechanics, information technology, electronics, product design) engineers and specialists who would orient in the field of mechatronics and possess knowledge in teamwork both on Estonian and international level. This is one of the measures that ensures the Estonian competitiveness in research-based development activities and in production at large.

Robotex is the greatest robotics competition in the Baltic countries, coordinated by Tallinn University of Technology and organized in cooperation with the University of Tartu. The event takes place for the 15th time. The first competition was held in 2001 at Tallinn University of Technology assembly hall. Through the ages, competitions have been held in various fields: line following, maze passing, volleyball, rope climbing, room cleaning, football, sea rescue mission, and others. The contestants have been participating from several high schools and universities, enterprises, and also from abroad. Since 2008, the event has been held at TUT sports hall, where larger area and better conditions have been ensured. In this respect, different expositions, exhibitions and workshops will take place at Robotex. Since 2010, it is a two-day event, where the first day is dedicated to the next generation of robotics, in other words, the competitions are held in easier fields, however, the second day focuses on experienced robot builders, which requires higher level of technical skill and knowledge.

The Technology exhibition has also taken place under the event of Robotex within the past four years. The greatest challenge for robot competition itself is to become the biggest robotics event in Europe by 2020. Robotex will be held this time at December 4 to 6. 15th robotics challenge asks to participate robotics engineers and students from any countries and of any age – it´s not necessary to be a student. There will be a record amount of prizes this year – whole prize fund reaches to 30 000 euros. And there will be many new international teams from outside Estonia to participate. The challenge is open.

More about Robotex 

VIDEOS:
Robotex 2014 introduction

Robotex Football

iRobot Sumo – vacuum cleaners comptetition