Olympics of … robots

The 5 Olympic rings at the PyeongChang Opening Ceremony were painted in the sky using 1,200 drones. Credit: Intel

Painting the five Olympic rings in the sky using 1,200 drones was spectacular and it was watched by billion of people around the world.

There were other autonomous systems roaming the Olympic area. Few kilometres away 8 universities competed in the Ski Robot Challenge organised by the Korea Institute for Robot Industry Advancement.

If you take a look at the video clip shot at the event your first reaction might be: “well, I am a much better skier, I would win hands down if I were to compete against a robot”. Which may also give the perception that robots are not that good…

Actually, if you are a researcher working in robotic field you would probably marvel and be excited at the amazing progress achieved by looking at these robo-skiers. One of the big challenges for the robots was managing the very bright images detected by their eyes (cameras) since the snow reflects a lot of light and this can get confusing for the image recognition function.

To qualify for the challenge the robot had to have a humanoid shape, be at least 50cm tall, be completely autonomous and use both skis and poles.

They were competing on a 80m slope with alternating red and blue gates (as it should be!) and they were getting 1 point for each gate crossed. In case of tie the fastest would win. Interestingly: in case of tie again (same time to run the slope) the tallest robot would win!  This is because the taller the robot the more complex the equilibrium (that is why there was the minimum height requirement).

For the record the winner was Taekwon by Minirobot.

They were not the only robots (in addition to the drones) at the Olympic event. Actually a journalist of AlJazeera came across 85 robots of 11 different varieties during his stay in South Korea for the Olympics, starting with those providing multilingual information at the Seoul International airport to those offering water bottles at the Olympic events.

One of them was Hubo, a robot that carried the Olympic Torch for some 150m before stopping in front of a (fake) wall and passing on the torch to the next runner (its creator…) through a hole …

There was clearly a lot of wow factor, mostly directed to people that are not familiar with the progress in robotics, but, nevertheless, it was a nice demonstration that robots can now play a variety of roles in our daily life and that will soon become part of it.

About Roberto Saracco

Roberto Saracco fell in love with technology and its implications long time ago. His background is in math and computer science. Until April 2017 he led the EIT Digital Italian Node and then was head of the Industrial Doctoral School of EIT Digital up to September 2018. Previously, up to December 2011 he was the Director of the Telecom Italia Future Centre in Venice, looking at the interplay of technology evolution, economics and society. At the turn of the century he led a World Bank-Infodev project to stimulate entrepreneurship in Latin America. He is a senior member of IEEE where he leads the New Initiative Committee and co-chairs the Digital Reality Initiative. He is a member of the IEEE in 2050 Ad Hoc Committee. He teaches a Master course on Technology Forecasting and Market impact at the University of Trento. He has published over 100 papers in journals and magazines and 14 books.