PetrSU held the International Robotics Competitions Roboskills 2022

The competitions were held for the seventh time, since they became the continuation of the Open Republican competitions in educational and sports robotics, which were held in 2016-2021.

Part of the program competitions was screening for the International Festival "Robofinist", which will be held in the fall of 2022 in St. Petersburg. For that, the teams that won the first places will become participants in the festival without selection. OnStage Junior RoboCup participants will be able to go to the Russian national stage of RoboCup in Tomsk in addition to Robofinist.

It was possible to participate in the competition on site, online and offline. On site competitions were conducted in the building of the Institute of Physics and Technology.

The organizers are PetrSU, Children's Technopark "Quantorium Sampo" Lyceum №1, Roboskills.

In total, 272 participants (162 teams) took part in the competition. Among them, 24 participants were from Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Germany, Finland and Malaysia.

Russia was represented by 16 regions: the Republic of Karelia, Moscow, St. Petersburg, the Moscow Oblast, the Kemerovo Oblast, the Kaliningrad Oblast, the Komi Republic, Krasnodar Krai, the Lipetsk Oblast, the Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, the Orenburg Oblast, the Republic of Adygea, the Penza Oblast, the Pskov Oblast, the Sverdlovsk Oblast, the Yaroslavl oblast. The participants live in 18 cities and towns of Russia.

The participants competed in 13 types of sport, educational robotics, and creative competitions.

Over 40 different educational organizations and family teams submitted the applications.

Karelia was represented by 163 people: 147 participants and 18 team leaders. So, out of that number, 52 became winners and prize-winners. Also, among the participants there were teams from Petrozavodsk and Muezersky region. The winning teams from Karelia were trained at the Petrovsky Palace, the Quantorium Sampo Children's Technopark, Lyceum №40, Peter’s Presidential Cadet School, the Children's Center "Drugaya Prodlenka", Petrozavodsk Presidential Cadet School, Robotics With Soul from Lyceum №1.

In the competition Creative task Scratch children under 12 years old were competing in an interactive animation on the topic “Manned flight to Mars” within an hour. In Tinkercad problem solving, conducted in two hours, they were to solve three problems about the Engineer and his cat, who needs to organize a special power supply, and for this, design an electronic device using Arduino. People from abroad took part in these tracks.

English and Russian were the languages of communication. In cases where translation was required, volunteers from Finland and students from the Institute of Foreign Languages helped online, but all the main points were clear without translation. The participants expressed their desire to take part in the competition next year.

The free creative category was also held online. Traditionally, the judging panel was organized by 1C: Programmers Club ("Neosystems North-West LTD"), involving jury members from different cities. There were 15 projects in total. The older participants demonstrated quite complex technical projects, while the younger ones showed their creativity and enthusiasm.

Lego and Arduino practical tasks included solving three problems. Each task tested certain skills. There were a few participants, as this is the most difficult test. For Arduino participants, organizers provided ready-made gear trucks, for which they were to write the code.

Tatiana Surovtsova, the competition organizer, Associate Professor of the Department of Applied Mathematics and Cybernetics of the Institute of Mathematics and Information Technologies:

“The most anticipated and spectacular events for the participants were on site competitions in sports robotics: the Walking Robot Marathon, a 4x4 Football Controlled Robots, Rally Down the Corridor, an intellectual sumo 15x15, a mini-sumo 10x10.

Football was the most popular event this time. These matches ended late while the participants of the other competitions had already gone home. A lot of emotions and attention were attracted by sumo wrestling competitions, where robots push each other out of the round ring. It was interesting to observe different strategies the participants used. Some used additional mechanisms to knock down the opponent, some made their robots as heavy as possible, some even created more complex algorithms for autonomous control, predicting and preventing maneuvers of the opponents.

Participants of Rally Down the Corridor solved the problem of autonomous movement, making their tracks through a limited space, while processing additional information from sensors. Participants presented four-wheeled “cars” with back, front or all-wheel drive and steering front wheels.

The most unusual designs were presented at the Walking Robot Marathon. With a different number of legs, the robots had to walk the circle on the line.

The most creative participants made videos for the offline competition Movement Mechanics, the voting was organized in the VK group of the event.

The most successful creative projects are recommended to participate in all-Russian and interuniversity events and competitions. The online finals took place in a virtual space prepared by PetrSU Artificial Intelligence Center.”

Participants were given diplomas, medals and other prizes.

The partners of Roboskills 2022 were: the Finist Foundation, the organizer of the Robofinist festival, the Children's Center “Drugaya prolongka”, Citylink, 1C: Programmers Club (Petrozavodsk), MTS-Karelia, Venture Capital Fund investments of the Republic of Karelia, Alter Ego Group comic book store, IT-shnaya, Center of Innovative Art of the Youth, PetrSU, and "Entertaining Robotics" as an information partner.

More than 20 first-year student volunteers from the Institute of Economics and Law and the Cooperative Technical College helped to conduct the competition, keeping order on the grounds and helping in refereeing.

The training was carried out by the joint efforts of specialists from Petrozavodsk State University: the Department of Applied Mathematics and Cybernetics, the Directorate of Pre-university and Career Guidance of PetrSU, the Children's Youth Center, the Children's Technopark "Quantorium "Sampo", the Petrovsky Palace.

The jury panel included more than 30 people. All showed exceptional professionalism, ability to work in a team and extremely high stress resistance.

In total, more than 50 people took part in the organization and holding of the event.

The event was held as part of the career guidance work of PetrSU. It is also included in the plan of scientific and practical events of PetrSU for 2022.