Tsukuba Challenge

Hello again, and we hope you have the nicest Monday of all.

Today we are talking about the Tsukuba Challenge, this was inspired by Darpa Challenge,, but it highly differs of it. In that all the computational work has to be done in usually one laptop, since this challenge is oriented only in mobile robot navigation.

The Tsukuba Challenge was an organizational effort started by Prof. Yuta of Tsukuba University and Prof . Hashimoto form or very own laboratory. It has as an objective that an autonomous navigated robot should complete a given path.

To finish the route, the robots usually only carry one laptop and in it they have to do all the navigational process.

In 2007 the path consisted in a straight course with no return in a park in Tsukuba City, Tokyo. This year Course was completed by 3 teams, 2 from the Tsukuba University and 1 from The Kanazawa Institute of Technology.

In the 2008 the path became more complex, involving a loop circuit, this time only the Yamaha Corporation Robot was able to finish the route .

This year challenge consist in the robot having to follow a course that involve among other things a small park and a bridge over a lake.

We are going to put a video that has a part of the course that was defined for the 2008 Tsukuba Challenge.