20/05/2010
On the 20th and 21st of March 2010 the Robot Challenge and the European Robot Sumo Championship took place in Vienna / Austria.
The Robot Challenge is a project of the "Österreichische Gesellschaft für innovative Computerwissenschaften". This year was the seventh time this challenge was held in Vienna.
The Robot Sumo European Championship 2010 was also hosted here, at the "Aula der Wissenschaften" (Auditorium Of Science, Vienna) for the second time. The auditorium lies in the center of Vienna near of the famous St. Stephan’s Dome.
411 robots and teams of 22 countries met at this challenge!
The Challenges of the European Robot Sumo Championship (in various categories):
- Nano Sumo (25g weight)
- Micro Sumo (100g weight)
- Mini Sumo (500g weight)
- Standard Sumo (3000g weight)
- Humanoid Sumo (3000g weight, humanoid walking robots)
- Mini Sumo Deathmatch (500g weight, all together against each other)
I have choosen the humanoid category (Humanoid Sumo) and took part with two identical robots.
Humanoid Sumo:
The mission: Push your opponent - a humanoid robot - out of the ring. Three rounds, three minutes each. A robot pushed out of the ring or touching the play field with any other part than his feet looses!
For this mission I built two robots, Evil Bill and Evil Ted.
They could shift their COG (Center Of Gravity) over their two feet to each side. For motion their shoe soles were moveable.
The robot stands, for example, on his left shoe sole and slides forward on it. At the same time his right shoe sole, while still in the air, slides forward too. After shifting the robot to the right foot he slides forward again, and so on.
If the robot want's to turn he is standing on both feet while moving of of the shoe soles thus turning the robot aprox. 45 degrees.
Evil Bill had a an old light sensor on each tip of his feet to detect the white line at the end of the play field. Additionally he was equipped with an ultrasonic sensor to "see" his opponent.
Both robots were very sturdy and no opponent manages it to knock them over!
After the qualifying rounds, where Evil Bill came in third the finals began.
With very much luck he managed it to win his rounds against industrial built robots!
So Evil Bill became European Champion while Evil Ted (same build, different colors) finished third!