Robotic technicians will compete in 10 categories, including three introduced by Innopolis University in 2018. Participants will be involved in competitions on manipulating systems and intelligent robotic systems and also present their IRS projects.

Participants of the Manipulating Intelligent Robotic Systems (IRS) category will be challenged with a task to design autonomous industrial robot with a manipulator and program it to sort out different containers in a logistic centre.

Manipulating Intelligent Robotic Systems is a category for schoolchildren of 9-11 forms and university students. Schoolchildren’s task will be to develop a multi-agent system consisting of two autonomous sapper robot and program it to do land navigation, searching and disposal of a bomb. University students will deal with SLAM — a classic robotic challenge when a mobile robot must do orientation in an unknown location, build a map, visit the key points and return to the original point.

The IRS Projects category is designed for schoolchildren of 9-11 forms competing in development of projects focused on solution of a problem on a topic suggested by the organizers. The project shall consist of a hardware and a virtual part and implement the IoT concept.

Food Matters — the topic of the World Robot Olympiad and related national-level competitions — is connected with the Goal 2 of sustainable development i.e. to promote sustainable agriculture, improve nutrition, achieve food safety and end hunger.

In addition to the new challenges, participants will compete in the Regular, Open, Advanced Robotics Challenge, WRO Football, Motor IRS, Water IRS, and Air IRS.

“Working on the challenges for this year, we have decided to focus on the application of robots in real conditions. It is important that the skills required for participation in the Olympiad are in-demand, and solutions suggested by participants can be used outside the competition area — in real life. Thus, Olympiad tasks simulate the problems currently faced by the modern intelligent robotics i.e. automatization of logic operations, and operation in complicated and dangerous environment”, — told Alexey Khabibullin, Head of Project-Oriented Olympiads.

Innopolis University will provide a platform for the Russian Robot Olympiad to be held from June till September and the federal training boot-camp to create the national team that will represent Russia at the international arena. The World Robot Olympiad 2018 will take place in Chiang Mai, Thailand, in November of this year.

The Russian IT University has been hosting the Russian Robot Olympiad since 2014 and training the national team to participation in the World Robot Olympiad. In 2017, thanks to skilled robotic enthusiast winning 5 gold, 1 silver and 2 bronze medals, Russia took the first place at WRO in Costa Rica.