The Mohamed Bin Zayed International Robotics Challenge (MBZIRC) is a biennial international robotics competition, organized by Khalifa University. The competition is held in Abu Dhabi, UAE, and is intended to be an ambitious and challenging set of tasks that aims to inspire innovative robotics solutions and technical excellence.
Under the assumption that the robotics will transform most aspects of human society, MBZIRC tries to bridge the gap between the current robot capabilities and the requirements of future applications. The focus of the competition is on increasing autonomy and improving coordination in multi-robot teams operating in unstructured environments.
MBZIRC2020 is the second edition of the competition, and LARICS is participating in all three challenges of the 2020 MBZIRC edition. We use two Kopterworx Hammer Mini UAVs and Clearpath Husky A200 platform with Schunk lwa4p arm.
MBZIRC2020 consists of three challenges and the grand challenge that combines elements from the individual challenges. The scoring scheme of the competition was designed to reward the autonomy, since results obtained in autonomous mode were scored higher than those achieved in manual mode of operation.
LARICS team for the MBZIRC2020 was led by Frano Petric with supervision of professors Stjepan Bogdan and Matko Orsag, and consists of LARICS’ PhD students: Barbara Arbanas, Marko Car, Antun Ivanovic, Marsela Polic, Ivan Hrabar, Ivo Vatavuk, Lovro Markovic, Ana Batinovic, Antonella Barisic, Robert Milijas and Marko Krizmancic. Being the robotics laboratory, LARICS decided to do the challenges autonomously.
The first challenge of the MBZIRC2020 consisted of two parallel tasks: intercepting a “runaway UAV” and destroying balloons in the arena. The runaway UAV was performing a figure eight shaped trajectory with speeds of up to 8 m/s in the arena, carrying the ball suspended on a rope that was to be grabbed by an UAV, which was then supposed to land in a predefined area inside the arena. In the balloon part of the challenge, the UAV was required to find and destroy 5 balloons scattered around the arena. To solve both of these tasks, we used information from stereo cameras onboard two Kopterworx UAVs and neural network detection of objects to estimate exact positions of targets. The results we achieved placed us 15th of 22 teams that attempted the challenge.
The second challenge of the competition was cooperative wall building using UAVs and a ground robot. Following a wall template that the teams receive just before their attempt, the robots were supposed to build a wall using styrofoam blocks of different colors and sizes. In this challenge, we used one UAV and our Husky UGV, both equipped with 3D lidars for building a map of the area. To find and localize the building blocks, both robots were equipped with Intel Realsense depth cameras. With both robots in autonomous mode, we placed 5th of 19 teams that attempted this challenge.
The third challenge of the MBZIRC2020 was based on a fire in the building scenario. A mock-up of a building of size 15x20x18 meters was build in the arena, with multiple floors, windows, doors. On each floor, there were several fires inside and outside on the facade of the building. Additionally, there were a few fires around the building. The robotic team was required to find as many fires as possible and extinguish them by either spraying water or deploying fire-extinguishing blankets. In this challenge, we placed 7th of 20 teams.
The final day of the competition was reserved for the grand challenge, which comprised of all tasks from individual challenges that were supposed to be running simultaneously. Although we qualified for the grand challenge based on our results from the individual challenges, we could not replicate those results due to various issues and placed 14th of 17 teams in the grand challenge.
We would like to thank everyone involved in our MBZIRC2020 adventure, with special thanks to our sponsors: mStart, DOK-ING, Kopterworx and RASCO. Below, you can find photos from our MBZIRC 2020 journey.
