The characteristics of the international robot competition: various types of robot contest in the world generally rose at the end of last century. In just seven or eight years, the development of robot competition is a process from scratch, from single to comprehensive, from simple to complex. Specifically, robot contest has the following characteristics:
1. The scale of the competition is constantly expanding: FIRA only had 23 teams from 11 countries participating in the first session in 196, and by the seventh session in 2112, 217 teams from 25 countries had participated in the competition, which fully demonstrated the vitality and worldwide popularity of robot contest in terms of the number of participants and the countries participating.
2. The competition items are constantly improving: in the first FIRA, there was only one competition, MiroSot, and now it has expanded to six competition series. The change of project setting from less to more can not only provide competition opportunities for contestants at more levels, but also promote the development of related disciplines and technologies from multiple angles.
3. The influence of the competition is increasing: During the same period in robot contest, all organizing committees will hold various robot exhibitions and related forums, which aim to provide a platform for contestants and experts to exchange experiences and learn from each other, and promote the development of robots and related technologies and their applications in entertainment, education, services and other fields. Therefore, every competition will attract the participation of scientists, researchers, students and business people from all over the world, and robot contest's influence will be improved accordingly.
4. Promoting technological progress: robot contest has played an obvious role in promoting the development of robotics and related disciplines, which is more obvious in the robot soccer series. For example, the robot soccer game requires a very high visual function of the robot. Only the better the performance of the graphics card equipped by the robot, the faster the robot can recognize and move, so as to win the game, which greatly promotes the development of visual technology. In the first FIRA competition in 1996, the working frequency of graphics cards used by most teams was 11 frames per second, and the moving speed of robots was only 51 cm per second. Only two years later, in FIRA's third World Cup, the frequency of graphics cards reached 61 frames/second, and the movement speed of robots was correspondingly increased to 2 meters/second, and the technical indicators were multiplied several times. Robot contest is actually a high-tech competition, which reflects the level of basic research and high-tech development in the field of information and automation in a country. Robot contest enables researchers to use various technologies to obtain better solutions, which in turn promotes the development of various fields, which is the far-reaching significance of developing robot contest and the charm of robot contest.
5. Promoting school education: The robot soccer series focuses on promoting technical progress, while other comprehensive competitions focus more on educational significance. Take FLL as an example. After the main body of the annual engineering challenge is announced, each team of FLL will have about eight weeks to make preparations, including analyzing the competition topics, designing solutions, building intelligent robot models with Lego accessories, writing programs, repeatedly debugging programs, optimizing programs and robot structures, and enabling robots to complete the challenges. During these eight weeks, if children want to complete their tasks, they must collect materials on the Internet, ask experts questions, consult materials in the library, communicate with other partners, discuss problems, etc. This is also a process of facing practical problems, solving difficulties and overcoming obstacles. Therefore, in addition to learning about robots, children can also improve their self-esteem, communication skills and hands-on ability, which is one of the goals of FLL and other robot competitions.