Humanoids at the assistive robot competition RoboWaiter 2012

Abstract

This paper presents the rationale for focusing educational robotics projects on the development of humanoid assistive robots. We discuss our first experience of such projects and their presentation at the international assistive robotics competition RoboWaiter 2012.The RoboWaiter challenge is to create a robot that autonomously, accurately, and efficiently performs an assistive food fetch task in a model kitchen.Since its inception in 2009, only wheeled robots have participated in the competition, while our effort is to introduce a humanoid category.In the paper we describethe design considerations of our humanoid robots, named "Technion Ed" and "Trinity College Maximus", and their performance at the competition.The educational implementation of the Technion project was in the framework of a school outreach robotics course, the Trinity project was carried out by an independent study team. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.