We just got back from our first appearance at the Amirkabir University International Robotics Competition (AUTCup) in Tehran, Iran. We took first overall in both divisions (kid and teen size) of the Hurocup league. Pictured above-left is our Post-Doctoral Fellow Meng Cheng Lau (Center) with the two Computer Science Undergraduate Students who went to the competition, Mario Mendez Diaz (Left) and Jin (Dylan) Park (Right).

There were more than a hundred participants across all the leagues in the competition, from eight countries: Iran, Canada, Taiwan, Malaysia, Korea, Mexico, Brazil, and Germany. The many leagues included everything from wheeled robots to drones, but our entries involved the FIRA HuroCup - this is a multi-sport event for humanoid robot athletes, in which the same robot must be used in all events. To win the overall competition a team must perform well across a range of events, each of which challenge different aspects of control, perception, and planning. We will be participating in the main FIRA HuroCup event in Taiwan later this summer, so this was a useful test of our work so far at a local level.

We competed with both large (adult size) and small (kid size) robots. Each of these leagues had mainly similar events but with a few differences. The overall results for our team (the SnoBots) were:

Kid Size:

• Archery - First Place
• Archery with Moving Target - Second Place (New Event)
• Sprint - First Place
• Long Jump - First Place
• Weight Lifting - First Place
• All-round - First Place (Second Place: Iran, Third Place: Brazil)

Adult Size:

• Archery - First Place
• Archery with Moving Target - First Place (New Event)
• Downhill Skiing - Third Place (New Event)
• Sprint - First Place
• Long Jump - First Place
• All-round - First Place (Second Place Iran, Third Place: Korea/Taiwan)

While even with significant support from Amirkabir we could only send three representatives, these entries represent a major period of work in our laboratory by many people. In addition to Professor John Anderson and the members of the lab who went to the competition, this includes Amir Hosseinmemar, Ph.D. student, Chi Fung (Andy) Lun, 4th year CS Undergraduate, Kurt Palo, 2nd year CS Undergraduate, and Ziang Wang, ECE M.Sc. Student. Congratulations everyone on this great result. Now we move to work on RoboCup, in Montreal, and the main FIRA HuroCup, in Taiwan, both later this summer.