American Open to draw robots, ASIMO

This week, over a hundred robots will descend on Carnegie Mellon. They will come in all shapes and sizes - humanoid robots, dog-like robots, small robots, and big robots. This massive robot migration does not mean Pittsburgh is the Cancun of robots' Spring Break. Rather, it is the site of the first ever RoboCup American Open.

The American Open, in which teams from the U.S., Canada, and South America are allowed to compete, will serve as a warm up for the international RoboCup competition in Padua, Italy in July. In past years, other countries - including Japan and Germany - have held their own national "open" competitions as a preparation for the international competition in July. These local competitions help to prepare teams for the international competition and generally improve the level of performance. This is the first year that the Americas will have an open competition.

Over 40 teams will be competing in the American Open. The event will stage competitions in several of the RoboCup categories: AIBO legged robots, small-sized robots, soccer simulation, rescue robots, and the junior league. The "rescue robots" challenge is a search-and-rescue game developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

The competition will kick off on Wednesday evening with a welcoming ceremony, and on Thursday, games in the simulation league, along with a number of robot demos, will begin. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday will offer the main attractions of the competition, with all of the RoboCup divisions competing and a number of robot demos taking place.

One of the most exciting sideshows during the event will be demos of the renowned Honda ASIMO robot, which is billed as the world's most advanced humanoid walking robot.

According to Manuela Veloso, the CMU RoboCup team leader and a computer science professor, about six hundred schoolchildren from middle schools and high schools will be visiting on Thursday and Friday. They will attend demos of ASIMO and other robots. For entertainment, the CMU team will send around some of its robots on AIBO skateboards - a new toy from Sony, the AIBO manufacturer.

The AIBO and small-sized competitions will be taking place in Rangos Hall on the second floor of the University Center. Flash photography, walkie talkies, and cell phones will be banned from the room during the competition. Camera flashes can disrupt images captured by the robots' cameras. Devices capable of generating radio interference are not allowed because the robot teams communicate using radio frequencies.

The RoboCup American Open is open to the public and is expected to attract a significant number of spectators.