Robot competition

A robotics competition is a competition where robots designed, built or programmed by different participants compete according to a certain set of rules. Different national and international organizations regulate the rules of these competitions, such as the National League in Spain, the Robocup in football competitions or the First Lego League in robotics for competitions that want to use specific Lego products.

Types of competition

Currently there are several types of competitions, the most popular in several countries being line tracing, the maze, Sumo wrestling and humanoid competitions.

• Velocistas: In this competition, the participating robots must complete a closed circuit delimited by a black line on white background running one against another starting at opposite points of the circuit. The race ends when one of the robots reaches the other since they have no way of detecting each other, they only have sensors that look to the ground.
• Followline: In this competition, participating robots must follow a line traced on the ground in the shortest time possible. The complexity of the route is usually greater than the view in velocists and markers can be used on the ground to indicate the optimal way to follow.
• Races: Similar to the following lines but cars do not use very obvious symbols to follow the circuit, use advanced vision systems to recognize certain features of the track as the lateral limits of the track and usually have the previous knowledge about the circuit they are traveling.
• Labyrinth: The test may consist of going through a labyrinth and finding the exit, or may also include the additional proof that the robot should find and remove from the labyrinth one or more objects located at different points of the labyrinth. The maze may be made with delimiting walls of the possible paths, or drawn on the floor with a line.
• Firefighter: The robot must be able to identify a small flame and turn it off using some mechanical element (usually without liquid use).
• Sumo: In this style of competition two robots face within a defined area; the idea is that they both try to get each other out of this area. The most important robotic sumo competition is the All Japan Robot Sumo
• Destructive fight with wheels: In this test, two robots are faced in a combat arena of a previously known measure. Both robots have a gun away and a weapon for body-to-body combat. The distance weapon consists of a launcher of some type of projectile, usually very light, that does not cause damage to its target. The two robots must face in the combat zone until one of the two is reached by one projectile from the other, or by its direct fighting weapon.
• Humanoids/Bipedos: Robots whose movement uses two lower extremities (analogues to the lower extremities of biped animals). Robots can compete fighting each other, traveling a circuit or climbing stairs.
• Stockage and storage: The robot must be able to locate elements in a closet and remove them without human intervention.

Main existing competitions

• ASTI Robotics Challenge
• All Japan Robot-Sumo Tournament
• Robocup
• RoboCAT
• Hispabot
• European Land-Robot Trial
• Alcabot
• Eurobot
• FIRST
• Malakabot
• UTN Concordia Robotic Group
• International Robotics Competition UTN Bahía Blanca Argentina (GRS)

Discontinued competitions

• Cosmobot
• AESSBot
• Robolid
• UTFSM Robotic Competition