A Guide for Online Information About:

Unmanned Robot Competitions

by Rick Prescott

The Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) is comprised of over 2000 members from over 20 countries in government, industry, and the academic community promoting the advancement of Unmanned Vehicle System technologies. AUVSI is a professional organization committed to fostering, developing, and enhancing Unmanned Vehicle Systems and related technologies by presenting and promoting UVS technology, applications, benefits, and information to the user community, general public, academia, and government decision-makers.

One of the ways in which the AUVSI promotes the growth of UVS technology and awareness is by the sponsorship of the annual Autonomous Robotics Competitions which awards over $20,000 in prizes. There are three different categories for these competitions—they take place in the air, on the ground, and under the water. The missions and rules change a bit each year, demanding more and more from USVs. This pushes the competitors to dream up and build continually improving machines to prove that the "impossible" can be reality. As can be seen from the links below, rarely do they listen to the limitations of others, rather only the limitations of their imaginations. Here is what they dream of at night:

For the past seven years, collegiate teams (with the backing of industry and government) have fielded autonomous flying robots in an attempt to perform missions that required robot behaviors never before exhibited in a flying machine. The initial 1992 mission was to move a metallic disc from one side of an arena to another with a completely autonomous flying robot. In 1995, success was finally achieved. 1995 Rules 1995 Results

In 1996, teams had to search for a toxic waste dump, map the location of partially-buried randomly-oriented toxic waste drums, identify the contents from the hazard labels found on the outside of each drum, and bring backa sample. 1996 Rules 1996 Results

In 1997, the mission was left the same but made a little tougher by adding more types of waste containers and making them harder to distinguish. 1997 Rules 1997 Results 1997 Pictures

In 1998, teams were getting ready for the Millennial event at the 1998 and 1999 qualifiers. The objective was to have a machine that could fly around simulated environment hazards such as burning vehicles, spaying water, and solid obstacles. 1998 Rules

The Millennial event mission definition will involve the use of autonomous robots in a human search-and-rescue role during and immediately after a catastrophe of major proportions in which an urban area has been decimated by earthquake, tsunami, and/or wind. About the Event 2000 Rules

The following are links to the project pages of some of the competitors. Designs vary from helicopter based designs to ducked fan craft.

Southern Polytechnic State University

MIT/Boston University/Draper

Carnegie Mellon University

Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology

Simon Fraser University

Stanford Aerospace Robotics Laboratory

Technische Universitaet Berlin

University of Central Florida

University of California, San Diego

University of Texas, Arlington

International Ground Robotics Competition

Fifteen unmanned vehicles designed by college engineering students entered the 7th Annual Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition (IGVC) on June 5–7, 1999. After two days of practice and tweaking onboard vision and obstacle detection systems, the student teams sent their vehicles off on their own to compete on three different challenging courses. By the end of the day, winners rejoiced while the rest went back to their computers and machine shops to try to do better next year. 1999 Results

At this event, contestants compete in four different types of competitions.

Autonomous Challenge Competition: A fully autonomous unmanned ground robot vehicle must navigate around an outdoor obstacle course under a prescribed time while staying within the 5-mph speed limit, avoiding obstacles on the track. Judges will rank the entries that complete the course based on shortest adjusted time taken.

Vehicle Design Competition: Participation in the design competition is a mandatory part of the Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition. Although the ability of the vehicles to negotiate the competition course is the ultimate measure of product quality, the officials are also interested in the design process that engineering teams follow to produce their vehicles. Judging will be based on a written report, an oral presentation, and examination of the vehicle.

Road Debris Bonus Event: This challenge is to see if an autonomous vehicle can recognize and negotiate a stretch of roadway or highway while avoiding obstacles that they would encounter in an actual driving scenario.

Follow The Leader Bonus Event: Automated highway systems require technology that allows vehicles to form and maintain "platoons," where vehicles autonomously follow each other with short headways, as little as two meters. The following vehicles must range to the leading vehicles and maintain the headway accurately under varying speeds, acceleration, braking, and even emergency stops, while steering to track the highway lane markers.

The following are a few of the competitor's web pages.

Michigan Technological University

University of Cincinnati

University of Alberta

Here are some pictures of the 1999 vehicles. Take a look at what these vehicles look like.

University of Colorado at Denver (CUGAR)	University of Colorado at Boulder (RAT)	University of Hosei (NECTAR)
University of Detroit Mercy (WHY2K)	Wayne State University (WAYNE ROVER)	Michigan Technological University (VERONICA)
Virginia Technological University (ARTEMIS)	University of Cincinnati (BEARCAT II)	University of Alberta (POLAR BEAR)
Oakland University (COYOTE)	Northern Illinois University (THE HOWLER)	University of Tulsa (HURRICANE ARIENE)

Thus far, there have been two events—one in 1998 and the other in 1999. Both years, events required that student teams design and build a completely autonomous underwater system that would traverse a body of water, navigate a series of gates, and return to a designated recovery zone. 1998 Results and pictures 1999 Participants 1999 Rules (MS word document)

For the 2000 competition, a number of beacons will be placed around the bottom of a pond. Each beacon will be equipped with a pinger (an acoustic transmitter) and a light source. Robots are required to locate the beacons and obtain and return the recovery marker. 2000 Rules

Here are the 1999 underwater vehicles wed pages:

Amador Valley High School

Cal Poly San Luis Obispo

Cornell University - RedTide Cornell University - YellowSubmarine

Ecole de Technologie Superieure Ecole de Technologie Superieure

Florida Atlantic University

Massachusetts Inst. of Technology

Stevens Institute of Technology

U.S. Naval Academy

University of Colorado - Denver

University of Florida

University of West Florida

Organizations and research centers such as the following are dedicated to the development and sharing of technology and information to further promote autonomous robotics.

The Machine Intelligence Laboratory (MIL) provides an environment for the design and development of intelligent, autonomous, physical agents. MIL Logo Machine at Univ. of South Florida

LEGOý MINDSTORMSý lets you design and program real robots that do what you want them to. You can create everything from a light-sensitive intruder alarm to a robot rover that can follow a trail, move around obstacles, and even duck into dark corners. Lego Robots

The Computational Intelligence group carries out basic and applied research in a broad range of related fields, including cooperating autonomous robotics, control of constrained mechanical systems, mobile manipulators, and lousy database compression. CSM

The Machine Understanding Group at the MIT Media Laboratory is building and studying surprisingly intelligent computers. Understanding Machine Group

The Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) is an independent corporation that was established in 1997 by the federal government to strengthen Canadian capability for research. The CFI will achieve this objective by investing in the development of research infrastructure in Canada. Canada Foundation Innovation

The Vision and Autonomous Systems Center (VASC) is a large research group within The Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. VASC personnel consists of over 100 faculty, students, and staff, working in the areas of computer vision, autonomous navigation, virtual reality, intelligent manipulation, space robotics, and related field. VASC

iRobotý Corporation is in business to bring robotic technology into the mainstream. While they continue to grow and lead the way in bringing robots to the mass market, they are continuing their commitment to providing industrial products and services through their IS Robotics group, and with their Real World Interface group, they will continue to offer the research community the widest range
of advance robotic platforms. iRobot

The NASA Space Telerobotics Program is an element of NASA's ongoing research program under the responsibility of the Office of Space Science. The program is designed to develop telerobotic capabilities for remote mobility and manipulation by merging robotics and teleoperations and creating new telerobotics technologies. NASA Space Telerobotics Program

Reporting on the theory and applications of robotic systems capable of some degree of self-sufficiency. Autonomous Robots

The Autonomous Undersea Systems Institute is a small, nonprofit, independent research institute in Lee, New Hampshire, which focuses on autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) and related systems. AUSI

The purpose of The Robot Channel is to assist in establishing collaborations among hobbyists, students, engineers, technicians, and researchers in the emerging field of autonomous robots and to bring to a wide audience a continuing status report of progress in this field from around the world. TRC

Their primary business is helping YOU build a mobile autonomous robot! Their mobile robots are used by researchers, businesses, universities, and hobbyist all over the world! Zagros Robotics

The Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center, San Diego (SSC San Diego) and its predecessor organizations (NRaD, NOSC, NUC, etc.) have been involved in various aspects of robotics since the early 1960's. Lots of robots here. SPAWAR

The RAS was established in 1989 and has approximately 7000 members worldwide who come from universities, government, medicine, transportation, electric utilities, and R&D companies ranging from multinational giants to individual entrepreneurs. IEEE

Founded in 1974, the Robotic Industries Association is North America's only trade association focused exclusively on robotics. Members include leading industrial robot manufacturers and robotic peripheral suppliers, system integrators, end users of robots, and robotic technology developers. RIA's key activities include sponsoring trade shows and application-specific workshops and conferences; developing standards, such as the ANSI/RIA Robot Safety Standard; and providing industry statistics, resources, and training materials. RIA

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