AAAI 2006 Robot Competition and Exhibition

July 16-20, 2006, Boston, MA

Sponsored by the American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI)

[Results from the Event] [Latest News] [Important Dates] [Registration and Email] [Abstracts] [Web Change Log]
[Scavenger Hunt] [Human-Robot Interaction] [Robot Exhibition] [Workshop] [Sponsors]

The Fifteenth Annual Robot Competition and Exhibition will be held in Boston, MA, from July 16-20, 2006, in conjunction with the Twenty-First National Conference on Artificial Intelligence. This page contains information and links for potential participants. Questions or comments should be sent to the general co-chairs for 2006:

All teams should watch this page for updated information about the events.

Latest News

Results from this Year's Event

Thanks to everyone who made this year such an amazing success! Here are all of the awards from the competitions as well as specific technical awards.

Competition Awards
Scavenger Hunt First Place KSU Willie Kansas State University
Judges' Choice Award for Outstanding Human-Robot Interface INL Robot and Human Systems Group Idaho National Laboratory
Judges' Choice Award for Outstanding Adaptation of Current Research UCLA HOBOS University of California, Los Angeles
Human-Robot Interaction Overall Winner LABORIUS Universite de Sherbrooke
Judge and Audience Favorite LABORIUS Universite de Sherbrooke

Technical Achievement Awards
Bridgewater State College Scavenger Hunt: Leveraging Commodity Components
Griffins Canisius College Scavenger Hunt: Educational Integration of Robotics
Pyro Robotics Bryn Mawr College Scavenger Hunt: Innovative Hardware Design
ND Rudy University of Notre Dame Human-Robot Interaction: Natural Language Understanding and Action Execution

Important Dates

Deadlines for Conference Abstract

Deadlines for Registration

  • May 15 Deadline for teams to register their intent to participate on the web site.
  • May 16 Teams are notified whether their application for registration has been accepted.
  • May 19 Teams are notified about travel funding
  • May 22 Team leaders send all paperwork to AAAI

Conference Registration Deadlines

  • May 19 AAAI-06/IAAI-06 Early Registration Deadline
  • June 2 Boston University Student Housing Deadline
  • June 23 Seaport Hotel Reservation Deadline
  • June 16 AAAI-06/IAAI-06 Late Registration Deadline

Schedule at the Conference

  • July 16 Robot teams arrive at venue and set up. Robot work area will be available at 7:30am.
  • July 17-19 Robot Competition/Exhibition Events. Tables for the exhibition will be available at 8:00am on Monday July 17.
  • July 20 Robot Competition/Exhibition Workshop from 10:00am - 4:00pm.

Registration and Email List

Email list

We'd like all interested parties to contact the organizers early if they are considering participating. To participate in rules discussion, and to keep up with the latest events, we are organizing an email list for this year's event.

To subscribe to the AAAI 2006 email discussion list, visit:

The aaai06-robot listserv page to subscribe and browse the archives.

Registration for 2006 is closed.

Conference Abstracts

Teams will be given the opportunity to submit a 2 page conference abstract describing their work. This abstracts are reviewed by the co-chairs and, if accepted, they will appear in the proceedings of the AAAI conference. For an abstract to be published, the team is required to register for the robot event and submit their registration fee payment to AAAI before the camera-ready deadline.

Watch this space for more information on publishing formats. For initial submission, the AAAI conference template format should be used.

Scavenger Hunt

Chairs:
Zach Dodds, Harvey Mudd University
Paul Oh, Drexel University

Robots search the conference hotel area for a checklist of given objects such as people or information located at specific locations or at a specific time. This task will require robots to navigate and map a dynamic area with moving objects/people in order to acquire objects to satisfy the checklist.

We welcome a variety of teams to enter with one or more robots and/or human operators, yet every entrant must demonstrate AI techniques during the competition. A key aspect of this event is having the robots interact with people in the environment during timed missions run throughout the course of the conference. More specific rules and guidelines will be posted shortly. We encourage urban search and rescue teams with AI components to consider joining this event.

Please see the Scavenger Hunt page for details. The scavenger hunt will be held in the atrium of the World Trade Center (layout in PDF)..

Human Robot Interaction

Chair:
Matthias Scheutz, University of Notre Dame

The Human-Robot Interaction event focuses on human-robot interaction. It includes a more structured version of last year's "Open Interaction Event" as well as the past "Robot Challenge". Teams are asked to submit entries of their own tasks for any of seven interaction categories. The first six demonstrate particular aspects of human-robot interaction, while the 7th is an "integration category", for which only tasks are eligible that demonstrate aspects from at least three of the first six categories.

The past "Robot Challenge" is now viewed as a formalized instance of category 7 with a fixed task specification: starting at the entrance to the conference center and finding the registration desk, registering for the conference, performing volunteer duties as required, interacting with conference attendees, and finally reporting at a prescribed time to a conference hall to give a talk.

Please see the Human-Robot Interaction page for details.

The Robot Exhibition

Chair:
Debra Burhans, Canisius College

The mission of the Robot Exhibition is twofold. First, to demonstrate state of the art research in a less structured environment than the competition events. The exhibition gives researchers an opportunity to showcase current robotics and embodied-AI research that does not fit into the competition tasks. Second, the exhibition provides a venue for faculty using robotics in education to present their approaches and experiences. We encourage participation from all areas.

All participants in the robotics events (competitive teams or teams participating only in the exhibition) have the opportunity to have a booth on display in the robotics exhibition area during the technical sessions, in the reception on Monday, and the poster session on Wednesday. Because the cleanup and workshop is on Thursday, we will not have any events at that time.

The following is a link to the robotics competition schedule:

schedule

Where you can find information about arrival and set up as well as various competition events throughout the week.

The Mobile Robot Workshop

Chair:
Bob Avanzato, Penn State Abington

There will be a robotics workshop on the last day of the conference. Teams who receive travel support must attend and present at the workshop. All other participants are strongly encouraged to attend and present. A research paper will be required within one month after the end of the workshop, and will be published in a workshop proceedings by AAAI.

Schedule

Sponsors



Webpage Change Log

Last updated 07/31/2006
  • Added robot expense form pdf to page 7/31/06
  • Cleaned up latest news 7/30/06
  • Added competition awards 7/28/06
  • Added link to CNET story 7/20/06
  • Added workshop schedule 7/14/06
  • More text added to exhibition description 7/14/2006
  • More specific dates and times added to on-site schedule. Added additional sponsors 7/5/06
  • Added list of sponsors and site map 6/23/06
  • Updated deadline information and how to log into the web page and how to subscribe to the mailing list added. 5/17/06
  • Registration dates for AAAI posted 5/8/06
  • Abstract deadline extended a few days 4/11/06
  • Added notification about travel funding 3/21/06
  • Added registration.pdf 3/16/06
  • Added information about conference abstracts 2/16/06
  • Added separate subsection for email list 2/15/06
  • Changed title of Open Interaction to Human Robot Interaction 2/15/06
  • Open Interaction expanded rules posted 1/30/06
  • Scavenger hunt expanded rules posted 1/17/06
  • Registration instructions expanded 01/05/06
  • Page posted 01/03/2006

Thanks to Bruce Maxwell at Swarthmore College for maintaining this page!