DAEJEON, host of the upcoming UCLG World Congress 2022, continues innovating. The city recently held the 9th Robot Fusion Festival online from 5 to 6 September 2020 which involved participants from different countries. This initiative received positive responses as reflected on the diversity of participants coming from 14 countries including Korea, India, Algeria, Colombia, and Russia, joining the online conducted festival at Daejeon Convention Centre (DCC). The online festival invited participants to showcase their skills throughout eight types of competition. The City Government of Daejeon cooperated with local universities, associations and federations and robot industry companies to organise eight competitions including:
- 2020 International Youth Robot Competition
- Creative and Intelligent Robot Contest
- Creative Contents Maker Competition
- 17th Humanoid Robot Sports
- 22nd International Robot Olympiad Korea Competition Artificial Intelligence (AI) Soccer
- 4th Robot Coding Cup 2020
- SAEON Autonomous car AI Mission Challenge
- M-TECH Creative and Intelligent Robot Competition
The 9th Daejeon Robot Fusion Festival was the first online robot festival held among local self-governments in Korea. This festival is expected to set a good example for online events in the future. Daejeon is planning to organise a seminar on how robot competitions and robot industry could actively respond in post-COVID-19 world.
Sneak Peek and Fun of the Competitions
Due to the pandemic, competitions were conducted online. In ‘2020 International Youth Robot Competition’ and ‘Creative Contents Maker Competition,’ participants delivered their presentations on ZOOM and were evaluated by the panel of judges stationed in DCC.
The ‘4th Robot Coding Cup 2020’ consisted an Artificial Intelligent (AI) Fusion Coding and Maker-Creation. Real time team-viewer monitoring and video conference were used to prevent cheating. There was also a penalty on maintaining the screen ‘off’ for more than 1 minute.
‘Bomb Disposal’ match in ‘M-TECH Creative and Intelligent Robot Competition’ used a robot car to complete the mission. The mission was to get out of the maze and move a fake bomb to the safe zone. Participants used applications (ZOOM and Skype) to connect their smartphones to control the robot cars placed in the venue.
Participants in ‘SAEON Autonomous Car AI Mission Challenge’ uploaded the mission programmes, which were for the autonomous cars on video conference system. When the programmes were inserted in each robot, the robot cars will operate themselves to complete the mission. Participants could see how the cars work on the online screen, and send their opinions and answers directly in the video conference. By this method, a fair evaluation can be made in the competition.
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