Challenge Protocol
Overview
The tasks which participants will tackle in this challenge are divided into separate stages:
- Pre-Stage: A qualification phase in simulation, where the objective is to pick up a cube and move it on a given trajectory.
- Stage 1: Participants who passed the pre-stage will be granted access to the robots and will be required to solve the same task but now on the real robots.
- Stage 2: In the last stage, the cube is replaced by multiple, identical dice, which have to arranged in specific patterns.
Participants will use the robots similarly to a cluster. They can submit jobs, where each job corresponds to executing an episode on a real robot. After termination, participants will have access to the data generated during that episode (all the sensory data and actions taken).
The code will be executed in a Singularity (similar to Docker) image, in which participants can install additional software and test their code in simulation. For this purpose, we provide a simulator with an identical interface as the real robots.
Prizes
In each of the two stages, the following prizes are awarded to the participants with the best scores.
Stage 1
Winner: 3,000 EUR
Runner-up: 1,500 EUR
Third-place: 1,000 EUR
Best Paper: 3,000 EUR
Runner-up best paper: 1,500 EUR
Stage 2
Winner: 3,000 EUR
Runner-up: 1,500 EUR
Third-place: 1,000 EUR
Best Paper: 3,000 EUR
Runner-up best paper: 1,500 EUR
Important: In order to receive prize money, winning teams are required to publish their report and source code under an open source license.
The pre-stage is not awarded any prizes and just serves as a qualification round.
Pre-Stage (Simulation)
Anyone can participate, no registration is required at the beginning of this phase. Participants can simply download a publicly available repository containing the simulator (instructions coming soon).
The goal is to pick up a cube and move it on a given trajectory.
At the end of the pre-stage, teams will be required to hand in a 3-page proposal and their code. Teams will be selected based on a combination of their score and the quality of the proposal.
Stage 1
The teams that passed the pre-stage will be granted access to the real robots and will be able to submit their code (instructions coming soon). The objective is to solve the same tasks as in the pre-stage, but now on the real robot.
At the end of this stage, participants will be required to hand in a 3-page report detailing the approaches used and their code (instructions coming soon). Teams will be ranked based on the score achieved by their code, as long as the report passes an acceptance threshold.
Stage 2
In this stage, the cube is replaced by multiple, identical dice, which have to arranged in specific patterns.
At the end of this stage, participants will be required to hand in a 3-page report detailing the approaches used and their code (instructions coming soon). Teams will be ranked based on the score achieved by their code, as long as the report passes an acceptance threshold.
Data Publication
When submitting jobs to the real robots, information like actions and observations as well as output of the user's application are recorded and stored (see documentation). During the challenge, participants can only access the data of their own submissions.
After the challenge, we may publish and use this data in anonymised form (i.e. excluding user-specific information/output) for research purposes.
By submitting jobs to the robots, users agree to this use of the generated data.