2003 AAAI Robot Competition and Exhibition

68 AI MAGAZINE ■ The Twelfth Annual American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) Robot Competition and Exhibition was held in Acapulco, Mexico, in conjunction with the Eighteenth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence. The events included the Robot Host and Urban Search and Rescue competitions, the AAAI Robot Challenge, and the Robot Exhibition. In the Robot Host event, the robots had to act as mobile information servers and guides to the exhibit area of the conference. In the Urban Search and Rescue competition, teams attempted to find victims in a simulated disaster area using teleoperated, semiautonomous, and autonomous robots. The AAAI Robot Challenge is a noncompetitive event where the robots attempt to attend the conference by locating the registration booth, registering for the conference, and then giving a talk to an audience. Finally, the Robot Exhibition is an opportunity for robotics researchers to demonstrate their robots’ capabilities to conference attendees. The three days of events were capped by the two Robot Challenge participants giving talks and answering questions from the audience.