The Universtity of Calgary recently held a new kind of robot competition; a race for skating robots. The skatebots were designed for an engineering class. Skatebots are autonomous robots that use the Lego RCX controller. The initial skatebots just competed in a race but the purpose of the research is to design a robot that can skate along with Olympic speed skaters, tracking them with a camera while recording their speed and path and also the environmental conditions of the ice. For more on skatebots, see recent articles in the Globe and Mail and Fort Frances Times Online.