<aside> ℹ️ I attended the IEEE RoboSoft Competition 2024 as the leader of the team. Our team built a soft gripper mounted on a UR5 robot arm that can grab and manipulate multiple kinds of fruits automatically. We won the autonomous prize in the competition.
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The RoboSoft Competition 2024 invites teams to test the design and control of their robots within a number of challenges. The competition will showcase novelties of soft robots like resilience, body compliance, delicate contact, and deformability.
The principal aim of the competition is twofold: first, to challenge state-of-the-art soft robots; second, to push the performance of soft robots beyond the state-of-the-art to increase their impact value.
In contrast to previous years, the RoboSoft Competition 2024 does not revolve around scenarios, but rather consists of an open “sandbox” style environment in which robots can face a wide variety of challenges and obstacles; points will be awarded for each such feature successfully addressed. These features target a variety of soft-robotic capabilities generally framed within the context of mobility and/or manipulation, and will be described in detail in the next sections. The theme of this year’s competition is “Fruit Salad”.
In the center of each manpulation zone will be a basket filled with fruits. These fruits will need to be retrieved from the basket and deposited in one of three locations: a grocery bag, a bowl, or a plate. When moving to the grocery bag, the fruits must be transported as-is. For the bowl or plate, the fruits will have to be modified / manipulated first. The plate will require precise positioning when deposited.
New this year will be a specific scoring element to demonstrate and reward the “softness” of the robot entries. Each team leader will be required to get hit in the face with their robot, with a scaling point scale based on the magnitude of impact sustained.