[Please note that, due to the current partial US government shutdown, the plans laid out below are subject to change.]
We are happy to announce that registration for the Agile Robotics for Industrial Automation Competition (ARIAC) 2019 will soon be open! Qualifiers are expected to begin in early March 2019 and the final competition will be held in May 2019.
ARIAC is a simulation-based competition designed to promote agility in industrial robot systems by leveraging the latest advances in artificial intelligence and robot planning. The goal is to enable industrial robots on shop floors to be more productive, more autonomous, and more responsive to the needs of shop floor workers.
As in previous years, this is a virtual competition using the Gazebo simulator and ROS programming environment, so there is no need to have access to robot hardware or travel to compete. Winners will be determined through automated metrics and a panel of judges. The prize amounts will be announced at a future date.
More information about the 2019 competition will be made available at:
We are proud to announce that registration is open for the third Agile Robotics for Industrial Automation Competition (ARIAC). If interested, please register here.
Make sure you’re ready for this year because there is only one qualifier. All the important dates can be found below.
Registration: Until April 12, 2019
Qualifer:
Accepting submissions: April 1 - 12, 2019
Run submissions and determine qualified teams: April 15-19, 2019
Finals:
Accept submissions: May 6 - 10, 2019
Official competition runs and judging: May 13 - 17, 2019
If you would like to get started early, a prerelease of the Gazebo environment is available for Ubuntu Bionic (18.04).
See this tutorial for installation instructions. Please report bugs in the prerelease and documentation here. A feature complete release of the competition environment and automated evaluation code is expected mid-march.
If this is your first time hearing about ARIAC check out the info below.
ARIAC is a simulation-based competition designed to promote agility in industrial robot systems by utilizing the latest advances in artificial intelligence and robot planning. The goal is to enable industrial robots on the shop floors to be more productive, more autonomous, and more responsive to the needs of shop floor workers. Because the competition will be held virtually, there is no need to travel to compete. The competition will use the Gazebo simulation tool. The competition this year will be run using Ubuntu Bionic, ROS Melodic, and Gazebo version 9.
While autonomously completing tasks, teams will be presented with various agility challenges based on input from industry representatives. In years past, these challenges included failing suction grippers, notification of faulty parts, and reception of high-priority orders that would prompt teams to decide whether or not to reuse existing in-progress orders. ARIAC 2019 will include these challenges along with others.
This year’s winners will be determined through automated metrics as well as a panel of three judges comprised of representatives from different organizations. Like last year, ARIAC 2019 will be a prize competition, with first place receiving $10K, second place receiving $5K and third place receiving $2.5K. There will also be travel support for a representative from the winning teams to present at an upcoming workshop.
The software for competing in ARIAC 2019 ( Version 3.0.1 ) has been released!
Please see the installation wiki page for instructions as they have changed, especially if you have installed a prerelease. This version is feature complete. Follow the ARIAC code release updates thread to get notified of future bug fix releases.