Tracks:

This year, the competition is IN PERSON at the ICRA venue. It has two tracks: the essential skill track (EST) and the manufacturing track (MT). Teams can participate in one or both tracks. In both tracks, a complete robotic system should be used. All tasks should be performed autonomously without any human input. Teleoperation is NOT allowed.

Essential Skill Track: (Contact person: Berk Calli)

The essential skill track comprises four sub-tracks. Each team can choose to focus on one or more sub-tracks. Teams will be ranked individually for each sub-track, and prizes will be awarded based on their standings in each respective sub-track. The tasks are co-developed based on the published benchmarks in the literature by the organizers and the benchmark's authors.

Sub-Track 1: Cloth manipulation -- You will compete to localize optimal grasp points on hanging cloth items like towels, shirts, and shorts. We provide datasets, tools, and full support for your preparation! Victor-Louis De Gusseme (VictorLouis.DeGusseme @ ugent.be) is leading this trak. You can find more details HERE . You can directly register to this sub-track using the form HERE .


Sub-Track 2: In-hand manipulation -- The in-hand manipulation task is focused on reconfiguring objects in robot hands. Any type of in-hand skills, such as rolling, sliding, gaiting, regrasping, and even manipulation with extrinsic dexterity, are welcome in the competition. The competition tasks will be focused on three essential skills: in-hand object repositioning, in-hand object reorienting, and in-hand precise manipulation. This sub-track is led by Kaiyu Hang (kaiyu.hang @ rice.edu). You can find the related benchmarking paper at HERE. The detailed rule is at HERE You can directly register to this sub-track using the form HERE.


Sub-Track 3: Picking in clutter -- Challenge yourself in the Grasping Track with a series of bin-picking tasks, grasping heterogeneous know and novel objects in heavy cluttered scenes. We provide a synthetic dataset for training your neural networks and full support for purchasing official or equivalent objects and preparing for the competition. The detail of the CEPB benchmark is at HERE. You can directly register to this sub-track using the form HERE.


Sub-Track 4: Human-to-Robot Handovers -- The tasks in this sub-track designed based on the benchmark published in Sanchez-Matilla, R., Chatzilygeroudis, K., Modas, A., Duarte, N.F., Xompero, A., Frossard, P., Billard, A. and Cavallaro, A., 2020. Benchmark for human-to-robot handovers of unseen containers with unknown filling. IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, 5(2), pp.1642-1649. Andrea Cavallaro (andrea.cavallaro @ epfl.ch) is leading this sub-track. You can find more details HERE. You can directly register to this sub-track using the form HERE.

Manufacturing Track: (MT)

There will be two manufacturing sub-tasks in the competition, disassembly and assembly using a NIST Task Board (NTB). Due to the competition format, up to ten teams will be selected to compete. A pre-competition NTB design will be made available for selected teams to continue development of their systems leading up to the competition. A new NTB with modified assembly positions (very similar to the pre-competition task board), and new parts (identical to all parts used in practice), will be supplied prior to a team's scheduled competition run. All details can be found HERE.

Judges:

Dr. Kapil Katyal and other scientists from Amazon Robotics will serve as judges. More judges will be announced. Please get in touch with the organizers if you are interested in serving as a judge.

MATLAB and Simulink Support:

Teams participating in the Robotic Grasping and Manipulation Challenge get complimentary access to MathWorks resources including MathWorks software, perception and control templates, and technical assistance for teams. Contact roboticsarena@mathworks.com with any questions or to get software help.

Accepted Teams (more under review)

Chonnam National University (EST1, EST4)
Giwan Lee, Jiyoung Choi, Jeongil Choi, Geon Kim, Phayuth Yonrith

Defence Institute of Advanced Technology (EST3)
Anamika B, Abir Paul, Abhilash Halder, Pradyum Aadith Sukumar, Nilesh Motwani

Ewha Womans University (EST1)
Hyojeong Yu, Minseo Kwon

German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence - DFKI (EST1)
Yuhan Jin, Dimitrios Rakovitis

IIT (Italy) (EST4)
Enrico Turco, Valerio Bo, Chiara Castellani, Maria Pozzi, Gionata Salvietti

Kanazawa University (MT)
Tokuo Tsuji, Ryunosuke Yamada, Kaihei Okada, Masanori Ueda, Takehiro Nishimura

Kyushu Institute of Technology (EST1)
Kakeru Yamasaki, Tomohiro Shibata, Krati Saxena, Takumi Kajiwara, Yuki Nakadera

Queen Mary University (EST4)
Yik Lung Pang, Chaoran Zhu, Changjae Oh

Samsung Research China – Beijing (SRC-B) (EST1)
Yixiang Jin, Dingzhe Li, Yong A, Jun Shi, Yong Yang

SCUT-ROBOT, South China University of Technology (EST1)
Supeng Diao, Yang Cong, Yu Ren, Ronghan Chen, Jiawei Weng

Shinshu University (EST1)
Solvi Arnold, Kimitoshi Yamazaki, Daisuke Tanaka, Keisuke Onda, Akihisa Ishikawa Yusuke Kuribayashi Naoki Hiratsuka

Smart Machines – TCS Research Noida (EST3)
Chandan Kumar Singh, Devesh Kumar, Vipul Sanap, Mayank Khandelwal, Aman Srivastava

Southern University of Science and Technology (EST1)
Fang Wan, Linhan Yang, Haoran Sun, Ning Guo, Chaoyang Song

Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU) (EST3)
Yeong Gwang Son, Seunghwan Um, Bui Tat Hieu, Ho Sang Jung, Hyouk Ryeol Choi

University of Ljubljana & Jožef Stefan Institute (EST1)
Domen Tabernik, Andrej Gams, Peter Nimac, Matej Urbas, Jon Muhovič Danijel Skočaj

University of Science and Technology of China (EST3)
Zhen Kan, Zhangli Zhou, Shaochen Wang, Tangyu Qian, Yinxiao Tian

Xi'an Jiaotong University (EST3)
Chengzhong Ma, Haowen Sun, Houxue Yang, Shaolong Zhang, Xuguang Lan

Xi'an Jiaotong University (EST4)
Wan Lipeng, Xu Jie, Zhao Chao, Wang Han, Luo Jiayuan

University College Dublin (EST1)
Yixin Deng, Keru Wang, Qiang Wang

University College Dublin (EST2)
Yixin Deng, Keru Wang, Olivia Leslie , David Cordova Bulens, Qiang Wang

ETH Zurich (EST1)
Hehui Zheng, Barnabas Gavin Cangan

ETH Zürich (EST2)
Alexander M. Kübler, Barnabas Gavin Cangan, Amirhossein Kazemipour, Jana Egli

ETH (EST4)
Alexander M. Kübler, Barnabas Gavin Cangan, Amirhossein Kazemipour, Hehui Zheng, Davide Liconti

MIT (EST2)
Younghyo Park, Antonia Bronars, Jagdeep Bhatia, Sameer Pai

MIT (MT)
Pulkit Agrawal, Younghyo Park, Antonia Bronars, Jagdeep Bhatia, Sameer Pai

MIT (EST1)
Neha Sunil, Megha Tippur

University of Auckland (EST2)
Minas Liarokapis, Geng Gao, Felipe Sanches, Joao Buzzatto, Nathan Elangovan

University of Auckland (MT)
Minas Liarokapis, Felipe Sanches, Geng Gao, Joao Buzzatto

Chinese Academy of Sciences & Yantai Institute of Technology (EST1, EST2, EST3, EST4, MT)
Bin Hu, XiaoDong Zhang, Xinjie Liu, Tao Cheng, Rurui Xue/MingHua Qin

Tsinghua University (EST2)
Yongpeng Jiang, Mingrui Yu, Yongyi Jia, Chen Chen and Rui Huang

Tsinghua University (EST3)
Shihefeng Wang, Xiang Li, Weiduo Gong, Yingyue Li, Junqi Ge

Tsinghua University (MT)
Guyue Zhou, Beiwen Tian, Kairui Ding, Lu Shi, Liyi Luo

Tsinghua University (EST3)
Xueqian Wang, Shoujie Li, Xiankun Zhu, Yucheng Xin, Xianru Tian

Tsinghua SIGS (EST1)
Chongkun Xia, Kai Mo, Yanzhao Yu, Keith Lin, Binqiang Ma

Tsinghua Shenzhen International Graduate School (MT)
Junbo Tan, Yichen Huang, Haotian Yang, Hong Luo, Kevin Fan

JAKS (MT)
Tokuo Tsuji, Ryunosuke Yamada, Kaihei Okada, Masanori Ueda, Takehiro Nishimura

Tsinghua 3C United Team (MT)
Fuchun Sun, Huaidong Zhou, Wentao Liu, Jiahui Guo, Jiaxing Hou

Tsinghua University & Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications (EST4)
Fuchun Sun, Bin Fang, Sicheng Wang, Yuhao Sun, Xiangbo Wang

Deadlines

Registration deadline:	January 20 31, 2024; February 7, 2024 (ICRA Authors)
Acceptance Announcement:	~~January 25~~ February 15, 2024
Travel Support Application:	April 1, 2024
Travel Support Announcement:	September 30, 2024
Competition Days:	May 14-16, 2024 (tentative)

Schedule (tentative)

Setup and Dry run are on May 13
Competition is on May 14, 15, and 16
Award and the winnder's presentation are on May 16

Tentative PRIZES

Winners will receive a certificate in PDF and their standings will be listed on this webpage.

Essential Skill Track:

Teams will receive prize money based on their standings in each task. Teams have the opportunity to collect prize money multiple times if they win in multiple tasks. The total prize money pool is $10,000 (tentative).The specific amount of prize money of each task is yet to be decided.

With our current budget, we have the capacity to offer a select number of travel grants based on financial need. We invite you to apply by submitting to the subtract leaders by April 1 a one-page narrative detailing your team's need for this grant and your intended use of the funds. Additionally, please provide a video demonstrating your team's advancements in completing the tasks associated with the subtract.

Manufacturing Track:

Teams participating in the Manufacturing track will have the opportunity to win prize money, funded by ASTM International. Participating team are also eligible for a travel reimbursement from ASTM to offset the costs of their travel expenses.
First place: $6,000
Second place: $3,000
Third place: $1,000

Organizing Committee

Jose Avendaño
Senior Robotics Engineer for Student Programs at The MathWorks

Berk Calli (primary contact person for EST)
Assistant Professor at WPI

Podshara Chanrungmaneekul
Ph.D. Student at Rice University

Andrea Cavallaro (primary contact person for EST Sub-Track 4)

Professor at EPFL

Joseph Falco
Project Manager of National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)

Salvatore D'Avella (primary contact person for EST Sub-Track 3)

Assistant Professor at Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna

Victor-Louis De Gusseme (primary contact person for EST Sub-Track 1)

Researcher at the Universiteit Gent

Kaiyu Hang (primary contact person for EST Sub-Track 2)

Assistant Professor at Rice University

Kenny Kimble (primary contact person for MT)
Research Engineer at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)

Ziyuan Liu
Chief scientist on AI robotics and simulation technologies at Huawei Cloud computing

Anastasia Mavrommati
Senior Robotics Research Scientist at the MathWorks Advanced Research \& Technology Office

Maximo A. Roa
Senior scientific Researcher and Group Leader at the Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics in the German Aerospace Center – DLR

Yu Sun (primary contact)
Professor at the University of South Florida

Ping Tan
Professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

Francis wyffels

Professor at the Universiteit Gent

Alessio Xompero

Post-doc at Queen Mary University of London

Previous Robotic Grasping and Manipulation Competitions

Competition Registration:

Teams from academia and industry are equally welcome to participate. One person can only participate in one team. Each team cannot have more than 5 members (including the team leader). Each team will need to provide the following information to register:

Essential Skill Track

One to two-page description about your team. It should include the names of team members, their affiliations and contacts, who the team leader is, which sub-tracks your team will focus on, a brief description of the team's technology, robotic systems, and sensor systems.

Manufacturing Track

One to two-page description of the robotic assembly system that you will use to compete. Include descriptions of your autonomous assembly strategies and robotic assembly system; robot manipulators, end effector technology, sensors used for perception, control software and any plans for incorporating the use of supplied CAD data. Solutions that rely primarily on teaching (also called lead through programming) are not recommended. Images and Videos that help describe your system and operating principles are encouraged, but not required. Also include shipping information for sending NTBs in the case that your team is selected as follows:
Company/Organization:
Attention:
Address:
Country/Territory:
Postal Code:
City or Town:
State/Province/County:
Telephone:
E-mail Address:

It's very important that a person's name is included in the Attention field.
Note: The organizers cannot guarantee the shipping times of the NTBs. Therefore, we have also included all sources and instructions for producing the practice boards on the manufacturing track web site.

Each team must email the required registration information in PDF to yusun AT mail.usf.edu prior to the deadline.

Sub-Track 1: Cloth manipulation -- You will compete to localize optimal grasp points on hanging cloth items like towels, shirts, and shorts. We provide datasets, tools, and full support for your preparation! Victor-Louis De Gusseme (VictorLouis.DeGusseme @ ugent.be) is leading this trak. You can find more details HERE . You can directly register to this sub-track using the form HERE .
Sub-Track 2: In-hand manipulation -- The in-hand manipulation task is focused on reconfiguring objects in robot hands. Any type of in-hand skills, such as rolling, sliding, gaiting, regrasping, and even manipulation with extrinsic dexterity, are welcome in the competition. The competition tasks will be focused on three essential skills: in-hand object repositioning, in-hand object reorienting, and in-hand precise manipulation. This sub-track is led by Kaiyu Hang (kaiyu.hang @ rice.edu). You can find the related benchmarking paper at HERE. The detailed rule is at HERE You can directly register to this sub-track using the form HERE.
Sub-Track 3: Picking in clutter -- Challenge yourself in the Grasping Track with a series of bin-picking tasks, grasping heterogeneous know and novel objects in heavy cluttered scenes. We provide a synthetic dataset for training your neural networks and full support for purchasing official or equivalent objects and preparing for the competition. The detail of the CEPB benchmark is at HERE. You can directly register to this sub-track using the form HERE.
Sub-Track 4: Human-to-Robot Handovers -- The tasks in this sub-track designed based on the benchmark published in Sanchez-Matilla, R., Chatzilygeroudis, K., Modas, A., Duarte, N.F., Xompero, A., Frossard, P., Billard, A. and Cavallaro, A., 2020. Benchmark for human-to-robot handovers of unseen containers with unknown filling. IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, 5(2), pp.1642-1649. Andrea Cavallaro (andrea.cavallaro @ epfl.ch) is leading this sub-track. You can find more details HERE. You can directly register to this sub-track using the form HERE.