Newsgroups: comp.robotics
Subject: Toronto robot competition
From: daniel.hopkins@canrem.com (Daniel Hopkins)
Path: brunix!uunet!spool.mu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!math.ohio-state.edu!uunet.ca!canrem!dosgate!daniel.hopkins
Distribution: world
Message-ID: <60.5451.4884.0N182150@canrem.com>
References: <1993Aug23.030301.12959@galileo.cc.rochester.edu>
Date: Tue, 24 Aug 93 17:00:00 -0400
Organization: CRS Online  (Toronto, Ontario)
Lines: 35

Hi Fred I was there. It was organized and managed by Mark Tilden from
the University of Waterloo and The Ontario Science Center. I shot a lot
of video tape of the competition and hope to release a video on the
games soon.

The Games were a blast and there were about 200 - 250 contestants of all
ages and educational backgrounds. University professors, graduate
students, college students high school students and public shool
students and there werer hobbiests and others there just for the fun of
it. Everyone just wanted to show off and they did. There were all kinds
of press and tv cameras and the competitions were great.

There were Solaroller races, Photovore competitions, robot sumo
wrestling, sumo aero-bots, aero-botic skill flying contests, robot
limbo, micro-mouse and nanomouse competitions. There were robot art
competitions and all kinds of speeces and lectures and about 25,000
spectators just to make the roboticists feel really important. Not to
mention the press from all over the world newspapers, magazines, tv,
radio, etc. It was a real show.

And best of all if you won you became an olympic champion robot
designer. In a few years it will be harder and harder to win. So now at
the beginning everyone gets a chance to go down in history. It is pretty
easy to win an event. Just think up a new one an enter the robot. If the
event is a successful one others will try to beat you the next time.

As a robot builder it is really great because you get to meet all the
real hardcware types and you see how others are using hardware to solve
real problems of robotic design after all hardware is the solution not
the software.

If you want to know more let me know and I'll try to get you the
information. cheers!

Dan
