One of the possibilities discussed was seeking corporate funding for a group robot to be entered in a national competition. Since I cannot include the entire content of the files in this column, I would highly recommend that anyone who is interested download and read the original files. It was in Canada in 1992 and Scotland in 1993. The Robot Olympics are much like the human Olympics in that there are many different events such as rolling, walking, rope climbing, flying, and jumping. There are also events for specialized robots that are solar powered, very small, etc.
All events are nondestructive to the robots.
The AAAI holds a robot competition in conjunction with their annual meeting each year. The BEAM has made numerous changes to the competition but always with the same goal in mind. Unlike most other competitions, this one is looking for the most capable general purpose robot. Past contests have involved fairly complex navigation, recognition, and manipulation skills. As an example, the 1993 contest required each robot to explore and map all objects in a series of rooms after which it would be instructed to navigate to a series of locations and retrieve specific objects.