Professional ground robotic competitions from an educational perspective

Structured robotic competitions have become a common method of evaluating the performance of robotic techniques. Some of these contests received a great deal of publicity and are widely used to attract people to AI and robotics, and to science, engineering and technology in general. In this paper the authors discuss possible educational benefits of robotic competitions. In particular, large and professionally organized outdoor ground robot contests are addressed, and of those especially the European Land Robot Trial (ELROB) is considered in detail. The ELROB took place for the sixth time in 2011. The contest is designed to compare unmanned ground vehicles in realistic outdoor scenarios. The tasks of the ELROB competition are described, as well as the participating academic teams. The educational impact of the ELROB and other robotic competitions is considered, especially in terms of team building and visibility aspects.