Results of the 2015 ARTSI Robotics Competition
at Tapia, Sponsored by iAAMCS

Date: Saturday, Feb. 21, 2015
Location: Boston, MA, at the ACM Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing

Click for photos photos of the competition.

See the main competition page for a complete description of the events.

Simulator Event: Shakey the Robot

2015 marks the 50th anniversary of the Shakey the Robot project. Shakey was one of the first autonomous mobile robots to use artificial intelligence. Shakey was developed at the Stanford Research Institute in Palo Alto, CA. A video demonstration of Shakey can be viewed here.

In the video, Shakey is told to "use box 1 to block door 4 from room 2". In the Robotics Competition simulator event, competitors were asked to reproduce Shakey's environment by building a Mirage simulator world with the necessary walls, door openings, and blocks. Then, they had to write a Tekkotsu behavior to make a simulated Calliope2SP robot move through this world to perform the specific task that Shakey was given.

First Place in the Simulator Event

Winston-Salem University team #1, consisting of Troy Hill, Omar Owens, and Anthony Scott, advised by: Dr. Rebecca Caldwell, took first place. In their simulation, two robots shared the same Mirage world, one playing Shakey and the other playing the Gremlin from the video. This is the first time any ARTSI competition that multiple robots interacted in a shared Mirage world.

Second Place in the Simulator Event

Virginia State University team #2, consisting of Cesar Montoya-Flores, Precious Neely, Chad Sadler, Brian Bennett, advised by Dr. Ju Wang, took second place. Their simulated world used Mirage's "material" feature to apply colorful skins to all the surfaces.

 

Download this Mirage world and Tekkotsu code.

Third Place in the Simulator Event

Virginia State University team #1, consisting of Alfree Conklin, Hope Gibbs, Brandon Lancaster, and Eric Glover, advised by Dr. Ju Wang, took third place. Their simulated world used large photographs as background images, and images of people as object skins.

 

Download this Mirage world and Tekkotsu code.

Main Robot Event: Domino Sorting

In the main event, robots had to visually detect and then manipulate four specially constructed dominoes. The dominoes were made from foam blocks and had laser-printed faces recognizable by the Tekkotsu vision system. Contestants had to program their robots to detect all four dominoes, pick up the domino with the largest total dot value, and place it next to the domino with the smallest value. They then had to place one of the intermediate value dominoes next to the other one. No team completed the entire task, but several came close.

First Place in the Main Event: Three-Way Tie

Three teams tied for first place in the main event. Each was able to detect all four dominoes and place the largest domino next to the smallest. The first place teams were:
  • Virginia State University team #1, consisting of Alfree Conklin, Hope Gibbs, Brandon Lancaster, and Eric Glover, advised by Dr. Ju Wang.
  • Virginia State University team #2, consisting of Cesar Montoya-Flores, Precious Neely, Chad Sadler, Brian Bennett, also advised by Dr. Ju Wang
  • Winston-Salem University team #1, consisting of Troy Hill, Omar Owens, and Anthony Scott, advised by: Dr. Rebecca Caldwell.

Second Place in the Main Event

The Norfolk State University team, consisting of Joshua Sherfield, Christopher Okonkwo, Danielle Toxey, and Igor Braga, advised by Dr. Thorna Humphries, took second place. Their robot found all four dominoes and successfully picked up the one with the largest dot value.
Competition Organizers
The ARTSI Robotics Competitions are created by David Touretzky of Carnegie Mellon, and administered by him and Tamara Rogers of Tennessee State University.

About ARTSI and iAAMCS
ARTSI (Advancing Robotics Technology for Societal Impact) is a consortium of computer science educators working to develop an active African American robotics community and recruit underrepresented students to pursue graduate training and careers in research. ARTSI is led by Chutima Boonthum-Denecke of Hampton University, and David Touretzky of Carnegie Mellon. ARTSI was formerly funded by the National Science Foundation's BPC (Broadening Participation in Computing) program, which now funds iAAMCS, the Institute for African-American Mentoring in Computing Sciences. iAAMCS is the sponsor of (and provides some funding for) the ARTSI robotics competition at Tapia. iAAMCS is led by Juan Gilbert of the University of Florida.