October Robot Competition FAQ Posted

Posted 8 Oct 2002 at 13:30 UTC by steve

The October edition of the Robot Competition FAQ is now available here and on comp.robotics.misc. Five new competitions were added this month. Three were more of the Battlebot-type events for radio-control vehicles but the other two are autonomous robot competitions: The DPRG Table-Top Robot Contest and RoboCup Junior Australia. RoboCup Junior has the distinction of being the only robot competition I'm aware of with a dancing event.

location-based listing, posted 8 Oct 2002 at 14:31 UTC by nevyn » (Journeyer)

It would be very useful to have a location-based version of this listing. I live in the UK but the majority of events are US based (unsurprisingly). It would be great to be able to quickly spot uk events. If the list is short for a country / state, it might also encourage more people to register competitions there :)

searching the list, posted 8 Oct 2002 at 15:27 UTC by steve » (Master)

I get occasional requests for different types of sorting on the competition FAQ. I've never come up with a format that pleased everyone but the combination of the date sorting at the top and alpha sorting below seems to produce the minimal number of complaints. :-) You can, however, search the list for "UK". I've tried to keep all the location entries consistent so searches should work okay. One of these days, I'll do some sort of dynamic sorting for the web version...

Unfortunately there's not much in the UK that I know of except for two Micromouse competitions and Robot Wars. If you know of any others, send me a URL or some contact info and I'll get them added to the list. Oddly I've had a hard time finding dates for Micromouse competitions lately. Both the UK events and even the All Japan Micromouse Contest (which has been around for a long time) seem to have no current info available online. Has Micromouse gone out of fashion, I wonder?

micomouse out of fashion, posted 9 Oct 2002 at 00:26 UTC by nevyn » (Journeyer)

I suspect that might be exactly the reason. After all, what is the point in spending time and money building a small and dull looking robot that just wanders around a maze when you could build a big impressive one that bashes up other robots...

Even for respectable robotics labs, the publicity of the battlebots and robot wars events is a little too much to ignore :(

As with all intelligent robotics competitions - such as the robosoccer games - they are just not as impressive somehow. Shame.

US FIRST Information Incorrect, posted 10 Oct 2002 at 16:01 UTC by nprobert » (Apprentice)

The US FIRST information is incorrect.

US FIRST Information Incorrect, posted 10 Oct 2002 at 16:24 UTC by steve » (Master)

Can you be more specific than "incorrect"?

FIRST Information, posted 11 Oct 2002 at 14:58 UTC by nprobert » (Apprentice)

Some of the FIRST events are now way out of date.

The 2003 schedule is now available at www.usfirst.org, but that does not include the various off-season competitions not hosted by FIRST.

FIRST Information, posted 11 Oct 2002 at 16:16 UTC by steve » (Master)

The only event I show on the FAQ for competitions with multiple regions is generally the national or final event of each season. For FIRST I show April 25-27, 2002 as last years Nationals Championship date and for next year, I have April 2003 which is as precise as I can be until they release final dates for the championship. But both dates are correct according to all the information I have access to at this time.