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RS Components sponsors open source robotics competition at RobotChallenge 2014

"Hack the Arduino Robot" will be part of this edition of the international event

 

RS Components (RS) and Allied Electronics (Allied), sponsor the open source robotics competition “Hack the Arduino Robot” at RobotChallenge 2014.

RobotChallenge has been held every year in Vienna since 2004 and is a competition for self-made mobile and autonomous robots. The international event brings together participants from all over the world to share their interest in robotics and present their creations to the general public.

“Hack the Arduino Robot”, a competition sponsored by RS, celebrates the increased use of open source software and hardware in electronic design projects, and is based on the Arduino robot, the first open source hardware on Arduino wheels , introduced in August 2013.

Participants in the “Hack the Arduino Robot” challenge, either in teams or individually, had to present their project idea, including a short description of a maximum of 120 words that answered three questions: What would you do with an Arduino robot? What is special about your idea? And what real life problem can your robot solve? An international jury has selected the 10 best projects based on the following criteria: feasibility; idea and creativity; technology and innovation. A total of 58 projects from 22 countries around the world were received.

The chosen participants have already received a notification of selection of their projects. The lucky 10 already have in their hands a new Arduino robot to use in implementing their ideas, and they will also be able to keep their robot after the competition.

After the notification, the participants will go to the implementation phase until March 9, in which they must carry out the project and post all the related documentation (this phase will be followed by an online voting period until March 23, extendable until the 28th of March).

The winners will be officially announced at the RobotChallenge 2014, which will take place on March 29 and 30. Winning projects will be published on the RS Components, Arduino and RobotChallenge websites.

RS Components will give away a selection of ISO-TECH products, including an oscilloscope, bench power supply, multimeter and toolkit to the winners of “Hack the Arduino Robot”, in two categories: Best Project Award and Documentation and Community Award. The main evaluation criteria for the Best Project and Documentation Award are the idea and the quality of implementation, the clarity and completeness of the documentation. Being an open source design, it is about sharing it with the community, so team participants are expected to document their project in such a way that others can learn from their experience and build on their ideas. Shared documentation may include videos, images, source code, CAD drawings, or any other related material. The use of any platform is allowed, as long as it is accessible through the Internet, including the team's own website, Facebook and YouTube, among others.

For the Community Award, after implementation, a XNUMX-XNUMX minute video introducing the project and team will be required. The video must be posted on the RS Components YouTube channel www.youtube.com/user/rswwwchannel and the project with the highest number of “Likes” (or votes) will win the Community Award. The winning project will also be promoted on the RobotChallenge and RS Components websites and social media.

 

About the Arduino Robot

The Arduino robot has two processors, one on each of its two boards, to make learning electronic design more interesting. It stands approximately 10cm tall and is 19cm in diameter. It is composed of two circular boards, each equipped with an Atmel ATmega32u4 microcontroller with integrated USB communication. More information and details about this product available at arduino.cc/en/Guide/Robot. In addition, at RS Online you will find five video tutorials on how to use the Arduino robot, as well as some simple projects based on this device.