The Mobile Robot Challenge

AAAI-99 Mobile Robot Competition and Exhibition
July, 1999, Orlando, Florida


Challenge Event Chair: Tucker Balch

Mission

The purpose of the Robot Challenge is to re-invigorate the AAAI Robot Competition by ``raising the bar.'' We hope to present the community with a new challenge that drives ongoing research and provides an effective public venue for demonstrating significant new work.

Judges

We are fortunate to have a distinguished panel of judges this year:
• Henry Hexmoor, UND
• Ian Horswill, Northwestern
• Leslie Kaelbling, MIT
• Sven Koenig, Georgia Tech

Task

In short, the task for the robots entering this challenge is to:
Attend the National Conference on AI.

Yes, that's an ambitious task, but that's why it's the Robot Challenge. We don't expect anyone to completely accomplish the task in the next few years. But we do hope researchers will make significant strides in parts of the task and share and build upon each other's contributions.

Registered teams

• CMU Officeboy 2000
• University of Southern California

Registration

To indicate your intent to participate, please complete this form. Alternatively, send your questions and/or registration information by e-mail to aaai-robots@gmu.edu.

Components of the task

Details of the task are given below, but you should not consider this to be a hard-and-fast specification. We would like to encourage broad participation, so if your robot can do something interesting in the spirit of the Challenge, let us know and we will consider including it. Also realize that your robot may attempt just a few of the sub-tasks, or perhaps a simplified version of the whole task from end-to-end.

Safe, engaging (even entertaining) and useful interaction with humans is of growing importance in robotics research. In that spirit we envision a highly interactive event. Here is a more detailed description of example components of the task for a robotic attendee:

1. Initialization at the front door of the conference center. The robot will be pointed towards the entrance.

2. Navigation to the the robot registration desk. The robot will need to follow signs, ask people, or devise some other means of navigating to the registration desk. The intent is that the robot should solve this step of the problem without a map.

3. Registration: Upon reaching the registration desk, the robot may find a line of people (and robots) waiting to register. It should wait in line until its turn. At this point, the robot will be provided a map of the conference hall, a destination conference room and a deadline by which to reach it.

4. Navigate to the conference room. The halls will be crowded with people (as at any conference) and the robot will be faced with several sub-tasks along the way:
   • Take an elevator: the conference room may be located on another floor, so competence in elevator use (including button pushing), is a plus.

   • Schmooze: some of the people crowding the halls are distinguished researchers. Your robot should interact with them to help advance its developer's career. It can recognize the dignitaries by face, (or in this first year by the colored badges they will be wearing).

   • Handle additional (volunteer) tasks on demand during the navigational phase. Your robot may be asked to ``guard'' a room for a few minutes or to deliver an object to another room. The robot should only accept these additional tasks if it can accomplish them and still reach the conference room designated in step 1 on time. It might also be necessary for the robot to prioritize according to who asked it to complete the task as well.

5. Reach the conference room on time.

6. Finally the robot will give a two minute presentation about itself and answer technical questions (OK, so this is a long range goal).

Details of the task will be tailored to highlight capabilities of the robots entering, so input from potential participants is absolutely encouraged. It is also perfectly acceptable for an entrant to target only one of the multiple task phases listed above (e.g. schmoozing or navigation).

We realize most robots will need ``help'' in some phase of the task, so ``short-cuts'' (e.g. mapping the conference hall the night before) and limited modification of the environment will be allowed -- but you must make sure the judges are aware of these adjustments.

Driving technologies

Accomplishing this task will require the integration of a number of developing and new technologies:
• Localization in a dynamic environment.
• Safe navigation in the presence of moving obstacles (people).
• Path planning (and replanning).
• Planning with time constraints and multiple changing goals.
• Visual tracking of people and face recognition.
• Voice and/or gesture recognition.
• Natural language understanding and generation.
• Effective and friendly tools for user-robot interaction.

Awards

Unlike past competitions, robots will not be ranked in this challenge event. However, a number of awards for technical innovation may be given for exceptional demonstrations at the judges' discretion. Award categories include, but are not limited to:
• Innovation in localization and navigation.
• Innovation in robot vision or sensor technology.
• Innovation in human-robot interaction.
• Innovation in real-time planning.
• Innovation in manipulation.
• Excellence in collaboration and integration.

If no robot demonstrates exceptional ability in any of these areas, the judges may decide not to bestow any awards. Conversely, if several robots show excellence in one category, multiple awards may be given in that category.

Written summaries

To ensure the technical advances are clearly understood, each entrant should also submit a four page paper summarizing their approach. You will have an opportunity to present your paper at a workshop towards the end of the week. More information on format will be provided later.