Call for Participation

          The Fourth Latin American IEEE Student Robotics Competition is an event sponsored by the IEEE Latin American Robotics Council, which promote the development and technological advances in Autonomous Robotics and Mechatronics inside Latin America. The aim of this competition is to join autonomous mobile robotics researchers and students through challenges in different categories including gathering and assembly missions and robot-soccer. This fourth edition will take place in São Luis, capital of the state of Maranhão, Brazil, on September the 17th through the 20th, 2005.

          The First Latin American RoboCup and the Second RoboCup Brazil are events sponsored by RoboCup Federation. RoboCup is an international joint project to promote AI and intelligent robotics research by providing a standard problem where wide range of technologies can be integrated and examined. RoboCup chooses to use soccer game as a central topic of research, aiming at innovations to be applied for socially significant problems and industries.

          The joint events are being organized by Universidade Federal do Maranhão - UFMA at São Luis, together with other brazilian universities (UFRN, USP, UFRGS, UFSC, FEI, FURG and PUC-PR), Brazilian Computer Society, Brazilian Automation Society, RoboCup Federation and IEEE Latin American Robotics Council. The competition will occur joint with VII SBAI - Brazilian Symposium on Intelligent Automation and the II LARS - Latin American Robotics Symposium.

          SBAI is in its 7th edition and is one of the most important events of the Brazilian automation community, which includes Electronics and Control Engineers, Mechanics and Mechatronic Engineers, Computer Science and math researchers. The first edition of LARS was realized in Mexico City in 2004.

          São Luís is located between Amazon and the Northeast coast, and is a world heritage island. It is the only capital in Brazil founded by the French. It has a Portuguese Historical Center, along with exquisite local seafood, and is close to one of the most beautiful deserts in the World: “Lençóis Maranhenses”, where pristine water lays lazily distributed onto several dunes.

The IEEE competition will have 3 categories

          IEEE-1. Beginners 'Lego' Competition

          This category is aimed at engineering and computer science students beginning to work in robotics and is based on the use of Lego MindStorms building blocks.

          The task involves two robots with different abilities placed in an arena (the robotic manipulation pharmacy) that must produce a drug according to a prescription, without any human interaction. Robots will read the prescription after the beginning of the challenge.

        IEEE-2. Advanced Competition

          This competition is for more experienced student groups. They will have to build robots that can pick up separated recycable garbage from city houses and put it in specific places in a recycling industry according to the garbage classification, which is given based on the garbage colors.

        IEEE-3. Robot Soccer 1

          Two teams consisting of three robots, one of which may be the goalkeeper, play a robot soccer match. Only three human team members, a "manager", a "coach" and a "trainer" shall be allowed on the stage. A network with any number of computers to control the team may be used. This category focuses on the problem of intelligent multi-agent cooperation and control in a highly dynamic environment with a hybrid centralized/distributed system.

RoboCup Competitions

          R-1. Small Size (Robot Soccer 2 or F-180)

          Two teams consisting of five robots, one of which may be the goalkeeper, play a robot soccer match. The robot soccer 2 category allows larger robots immersed in a larger field of play, in contrast with the Robot Soccer 1 Category. The F-180 category also focuses on the problem of intelligent multi-agent cooperation and control in a highly dynamic environment.

          R-2. Simulation

          The RoboCup Soccer Simulator is a research and educational tool for multi-agent systems and artificial intelligence. It enables for two teams of 11 simulated autonomous robotic players to play soccer.

Participants

          The participating groups must be engineering students with a maximum of 4 members. At least one member of the group must be a IEEE member.

Deadlines

          Deadline for teams subscriptions and team description paper: August 1st.

Local Organizing Committee

          Alexandre César Muniz de Oliveira, UFMA, Brasil.
          Aristófanes Corrêa Silva, UFMA, Brasil.
          Francisco José da Silva e Silva , UFMA, Brasil.
          João Viana Fonseca, UFMA, Brasil (Chair).
          Mário Antonio Meireles Teixeira, UFMA, Brasil.

Technical Committee

          Alexandre da Silva Simões, UNESP Sorocaba, Brasil.
          Flávio Tonidandel, FEI, Brasil.
          Leandro Coelho, PUC-PR, Brasil.
          Reinaldo Augusto Bianchi, FEI, Brasil. (Chair)
          Silvia S.C. Botelho, FURG, Brasil.