Robotics is an International Event in Korea

Maurice Tedder, Master of Science in Computer Science Program

From November 4 – 7^th I attended the 6^th International Robot Olympiad in Daejeon, South Korea. The Robot Olympiad was held at the Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in Daejeon, which is the “silicon valley” of South Korea. KAIST is one of Koreas’ top research universities engaging in research ranging from nanotechnology to robotics. The president of the University is Dr. Robert B. Laughlin, an American who won the Nobel Prize in Physics 1998. In addition to the Olympiad, I also attended the 2^nd International Symposium Robotics Education and represented Lawrence Technological University and the USA by presenting our educational laptop robot platform that is used to teach Java programming and robotics. Professor CJ Chung, former students, and me, developed the laptop robot. After my presentation, many people asked questions and showed great interest in our laptop robot platform. I also attended the International workshop on Ubiquitous Robots where topics ranged from giving robots emotions to Udibots that are intelligent omnipresent mobile software programs that follow the user via wireless networks.

Participants included students, professors, researchers, and teachers from Korea, China, Philippines, Bulgaria, Turkey, Austria, USA, Australia, Canada, Israel, UK, and Mexico. They participated in a variety of categories including: robot soccer, stair climbing robots, legged robot obstacle race, robot line tracing, and robot dancing. Participants ranged in age from ten to over nineteen years old. There was also a creativity category in which I was one of 4 judges evaluating robot creations designed and built on site by 16 different competing teams. The theme for the 2004 creativity category was robots in space. My favorite team in the creativity category is team Thomas who won second place with three robots (humanoid, four legged, and wheeled) capable of working together to explore and gather samples on other planets. After the event, all of the judges including myself were awarded gold medals as a token of appreciation.

I also spent time with Professor Jong-Hwan Kim who is Chairman of the International Robot Olympiad Committee and founder of the Robot Olympiad. He gave us a tour of the KAIST University and Daejeon city and introduced us to Korean culture. He also took us to a Korean restaurant that served a variety of dishes including a tiny whole fried crab the size of quarter that I ate in one bite (crunch!). I also meet many new friends from around the world that I hope to see again at the next Olympiad. I thank IROC (International Robot Olympiad Committee) for supporting all the travel expenses, hotel, and meals. A video presentation of this event will be shown to the LTU community when the official videos are released.