Autonomy Award for 2024 IEEE RoboSoft Competition

The RoboSoft Competition 2024 invites teams to test their robots’ design and control with several 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 various challenges and obstacles; points will be awarded for each 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”.

A basket filled with fruits will be in the center of each manipulation zone. These fruits must 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. The fruits will have to be modified/manipulated for the bowl or plate first. The plate will require precise positioning when deposited.

This year, a specific scoring element will 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.