International Humanoid Robot Olympic Games

The Chinese have just announced that they intend to hold the first ever International Humanoid Robot Olympic Games in the city of Harbin possibly in June 2010. There are few details about the event other than what was posted in a brief article on CCTV's website; you can read the article here.

The organizers are busy trying to find sponsors for the robot Olympics while they expect 100 Universities from 20 countries will send robots to compete. The Olympics will be exclusive to humanoid robots. The events will be a mixture of traditional Olympic sports such as track and field and more robotics related activities such as doing housework.

The organizers claim that the robot Olympics are designed to help make more intelligent robots for use at home. The Humanoid Olympic Games will be competing with the well established RobotCup competition which attracts much attention every year. Robot rescue and robot soccer are the two main events with the latter having the longest history in robotics competitions (see our previous stories "Robot soccer: Then and now!" and "RoboCup: When and why did robots start playing soccer? for more information".)

I am curious to see if the Humanoid Olympics actually take place and if so how many Universities will be able to take part. More importantly, it is amazing to me that in 2009, we can start thinking about robotics competitions that involve only humanoid robots and expect many participants. It goes to show how quickly the field of robotics has advanced in the last decade.