Darren Chen, a Ph.D. student in computer science at UC San Diego, had just landed in Japan when he saw ads in the subway for the competition he was going to take part in. "I realized it was a big deal," he said. He might even have panicked a little, he admitted.
In fact, the competition, called the RoboCup, brought more than 10,000 spectators and competitors to Nagoya, Japan at the end of July. The event, which is broadcast on Japanese TV, was celebrating its 20th anniversary.
Chen was part of a team of Ph.D. students from the Contextual Robotics Institute here at the Jacobs School that was taking part in the event's RoboCup @ Home challenge. It was UC San Diego's first time taking part in the competition.
In the @ Home challenge, 10 universities from around the world compete to complete a series of tasks by programming and training a Toyota Human Support Robot. The UC San Diego team had to sort groceries and help a person carry grocery items.
In addition, they faced a task to qualify. Without any advance notice, they had to program the Toyota robot to autonomously navigate a room without bumping into people and objects. The team used simultaneous localization and mapping, or SLAM, to map out the room. The robot had to be able to obey the verbal commands to "go" and "continue."
But the team's worst foe turned out to be the venue's WiFi. When 10,000 people use the same network to communicate, that makes it very hard for researchers to talk to their robots, the UC San Diego team discovered.
Researchers now are taking stock of all the lessons they've learned and looking forward to the competition next year, when it will take place in Montreal.
More info: http://jacobsschool.ucsd.edu/news/news_releases/release.sfe?id=2268