AAAI Robot Challenge

Robot Challenge Event Chair: Benjamin Kuipers: kuipers@cs.utexas.edu
Assistant Event Chair: Ashley W. Stroupe: ashley@ri.cmu.edu

• Last update: 1 March 2002.

Purpose

The Task: Attend AAAI-2002

The subtasks are the following. Ideal performance is indicated (think of Lieutenant Commander Data or C3PO), and some possible compromises.

1. Start at the front door of the conference center.
   • Pictures of entry and elevator

   • Ideally, identify the doorway and enter.
   • Or, the robot may be pointed toward the entrance and escorted inside.

2. Navigate to the registration desk.
   • Ideally, locate signs or ask people how to find the registration desk.
   • Or, the robot gets directions using a special-purpose gesture language.
   • Or, show the robot a graphical map to follow.
   • Or, provide a human guide to track and follow.
   • Or, directly download a map of the convention center into the robot's memory (robot telepathy).
   • Or, develop some other creative solution.

3. Register: stand in line if necessary, identify itself, receive registration material, a map of the conference center, and a room number and time for its talk.
   • Ideally, stand in line politely, moving forward as appropriate, recognize when it has reached the head of the line, use voice to identify itself, receive and understand printed or spoken information.
   • Or, bull its way directly to the registration desk, ignoring other people or robots in line.
   • Or, expect to be recognized by the registrar or identified by a human colleague.
   • Or, receive map, room number and talk time by direct download.

4. Interact with other conference attendees.
   • Ideally, recognize other participants by reading nametags or recognizing faces, and strike up brief personal conversations.
   • Or, recognize friendly roboticists by specially-colored tags or ribbons, and converse with them.
   • Or, stand near a non-moving person and emit speech-like sounds.
   • Or, avoid collisions with static and moving pedestrians on the way to the conference room.

5. Get to the conference room on time, taking an elevator if necessary.
   • Ideally, use the conference center map to plan a route to the conference room, including using the elevator. Predict the required amount of travel time. Carry out the plan in spite of large numbers of other conference attendees.
   • Pushing its own elevator buttons is especially classy, or a human attendant can do the button-pushing.
   • Or, follow a human-created plan, but localize in the map and autonomously avoid collisions while carrying it out.
   • Or, accept the shame of being driven like an RC toy.

6. If requested, perform volunteer tasks as time permits.
   • Ideally, recognize a verbal request to deliver something to another room, decide whether there is time before the talk, and if so, do the delivery and return on time.
   • Or, receive a keyboard interrupt specifying a delivery destination. Accept and perform the chore only if there is time.
   • Or, on receiving the keyboard interrupt, politely decline to help.

7. Make a two-minute presentation about its own technology, and answer questions.
   • Ideally, give a PowerPoint presentation with clarifying verbal explanations, and give cogent replies to questions. Be prepared to discuss the relevance of Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics to contemporary research robots.
   • Or, give a PowerPoint presentation, reading the slides aloud, and rephrase whatever question is asked to match one of the available answers.
   • Or, give a PowerPoint presentation with recorded voice accompaniment.
   • Or, stand mute while the human attendant gives the presentation.

Driving Technologies

• Localization in a dynamic environment.
• Safe navigation in the presence of moving obstacles (people).
• Path planning and replanning.
• Planning with time constraints.
• Visual tracking of people, signs, and architecture.
• Speech, gesture, and face recognition.
• Natural language generation and understanding.
• Effective and friendly human-robot interaction.

Registered Teams

The robot teams that are currently registered are:

• Grace: CMU, NRL, NWU, Metrica, Swarthmore.
• CoWorker from iRobot, a teleoperated robot.
• John Leonard's lab at MIT, demonstration of autonomous mapping and localization.

Judging and Awards

We will have a distinguished panel of judges again this year.

• Leslie Kaelbling
• Ben Wegbreit
• Ben Kuipers

The Robot Challenge event itself will take place on Wednesday, July 31. There may be preliminary trials on Tuesday, July 30 as well.

Written Reports

There will be a workshop on Thursday, August 1, at which these papers will be presented and experiences and difficulties discussed. (More information later.)