The children are slightly startled until one of their dads asks if the creature would be a good addition to their robotics team. “Certainly!” his kid agrees to take the teleoperated osteomorphic robot created by Ahhaa Science Center on board.
The biggest international robotics festival, Robotex International, took place this weekend at Tallinn’s Unibet Arena. It brought together robotics enthusiasts worldwide for two days of exciting robotics competitions, workshops, and a technology exhibition.
Children taking us to the Moon and back (if the code does not fail)
“To the Moon!” one of the second graders from a team called “Pancakes”, all wearing similar blue-white T-shirts, exclaims as she runs the robot’s code on a tablet in her hand. Next to them is a team of little ones from Cyprus, getting their rocket ready to hit space. In addition to traditional competitions such as Lego Sumo, Folkrace and more, this year, there was a robotics competition, especially for the tiny robotics enthusiasts, its theme being “How to get to the Moon?”.
And there were certainly some clever answers, as 1,100 competitors, some as young as preschoolers, took part in the Roboliiga competition.
More than half of schools and many kindergartens in Estonia teach children programming and robotics through play so that they would – without too much effort or screen time – pick up IT skills. It is worth noting that the first Estonian children who started studying robotics in first grade or even kindergarten are now graduating high school – and as seen from Robotex, there are upcoming generations of both boys and girls who are as enthusiastic.
In the more traditional competitions, where many of those who began their robotics journey at an early age now compete, matches were held in various disciplines: deathly fights in robotic fighting rings, fast races on tracks of line and water, and even captivating drone races in the air. For those interested in artificial intelligence, Tallinn’s technical university, TalTech, created an AI competition where the top six could win a place in the university’s Bachelor studies.
From a humanoid robot to a robotic boat mapping out windfarms
Of course, Ahhaa’s skeletal robot is not the only humanoid we meet that day, as we come across Semubot, an innovative student project in which university and high school students are developing Estonia’s first humanoid robot. The robot’s primary function is to support children’s speech therapy, though it can be adapted for various service sectors in the future. Semubot, whose name could be translated as Friendbot, contributes to advancing social robotics in Estonia and globally, enabling experimentation with cutting-edge technologies backed by scientific research.
The festival’s biggest robot – which you, at first sight, would probably confuse with an ordinary boat – is called Heli, after a popular Estonian woman’s name, also meaning “sound” in Estonian. The unmanned (and unwomaned) vessel, developed by the University of Tartu’s Estonian Marine Institute, is being introduced. It is intended to be used to study fish schools and map the territories of wind farms. The environmentally friendly vessel has an autonomous navigation system that allows it to follow a predetermined route and collect data via sonar independently. Heli’s operating radius is around 300 kilometres. The ship’s software solutions can also be applied to larger vessels for scientific research, such as taking water samples or monitoring marine infrastructure.
Robotex was held for the 24th season. Globally, 50,000 young engineers attended its festivals throughout the year, and nearly 3,000 competitors from 34 countries competed in various events at Unibet Arena.
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