F
rom 1997 to 2004, I competed around
the world in a number of different robot
categories, primarily sumo robots. I also
worked a lot of shows (judges are always in
demand) while teaching robotics at San Francisco
State University. One thing I noticed in that time
was not only the variety of robots out there, but
also the variety of skills needed to build a robot.
And so I started RoboGames. The goal was to
expose an audience at large to all the different
sports (they’d come to watch combat, but stay
for the soccer), and to cross-pollinate the
contestants so that they’d become more familiar
with other disciplines and possibilities.
Let’s break down the categories of robot sports:
A
HUMANOIDS: The dream of all robot
thinkers. They’re usually only about 16 inches
tall, but modern humanoid robots can walk, run,
do cartwheels, backflips, and even play soccer
and basketball.
B
SUMO: The oldest of robot sports, going back
over 30 years. Basically, Rubik’s Cube-sized robots
that can think for themselves and autonomously
find their opponent and push it out of the ring.
C
COMBAT: Just like NASCAR, it’s exciting, big,
and there are lots of crashes and explosions.
While 100kg (220lbs) is the size of choice for the
audience, there are six different weight classes
as small as 150g (5.3oz) (see “Know Your Combat
Robots!” on page 26).
D
SOCCER: Sometimes played with humanoids,
sometimes with wheeled bots, this is the hardest
of the robot sports. You have to be able to
program the robot to do all sorts of moves and
work with between 3 and 11 robots per team.
E
AUTONOMOUS CARS: Commercial
autonomous cars still don’t perform perfectly,
and so we have autonomous robo-cars: line
followers, NatCar (really fast line followers), and
RoboMagellan, which is fully GPS driven.
Version 1 of Kerfuffle, 2019. ]
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Jon C R Bennett / JCRBPhoto, Mike Senese, Sam Coniglio
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