Today, Microsoft officially launched the Urban Challenge, sponsored by KIA Motors.  KIA's sponsorship has taken RoboChamps to a brand new level - both in realism and in terms of prizes.

KIA has been very generous with models of their cars and buildings. This enables us to provide additional realism in the environment, as you will have the opportunity to choose one of 5 robot cars based on real KIA models.You'll program these cars to navigate a course through a large city, that comes complete with other moving cars, video billboards and working traffic lights. You car is loaded up with a number of sensors to help you achieve your goal, including multiple cameras, a laser rangefinder, bumpers, and a GPS unit.

We're also announcing that KIA's sponsorship is providing the largest prizes in the history of RoboChamps. Participants will be competing to win prizes including $5000, $10,000, and even a real car!

This video provides an overview of the new competition, with video of what you can expect in the simulation environment.

For additional details, check out the RoboChamps website (www.robochamps.com)

I had a chance to sit down with Tina from on10.net recently, and the interview - focused on the new Sumo Bot challenge - has now been published.

Check it out here - http://www.on10.net/blogs/tina/RoboChamps-Sumo-Challenge/

Microsoft revealed today the winners of the first challenge of its simulated robotics competition, RoboChamps. Dave Sprague, a robotics enthusiast from the U.S., and Jackson Matsuura, a college professor from Brazil, won the first and second prizes of the “Amazed” Challenge. First place winner Sprague will take home a real robot, the CoroWare CoroBot. The second-place prize is a Boe-Bot Kit for Microsoft Robotics Studio, which Matsuura won. Sprague and Matsuura were among more than 6,500 people who downloaded the Amazed Challenge Kit.

Sprague, whose RoboChamps avatar is named “Shakey,” has been interested in robotics since he was a child. He has worked for Intel and helped coach a middle school FIRST Lego robotics team in Belfast, Maine. Matsuura, also known as “Kirk” in the competition, teaches in one of the most high-profile engineering schools in Brazil and enjoys participating in robotics competitions to introduce his students to the exciting world of robotics.

RoboChamps has attracted thousands of professionals, academics and enthusiasts from around the world, and participants in the Amazed Challenge hail from 77 different countries. RoboChamps.com, the competition’s official Web site, averages one million page views per month, and videos describing the competition have been viewed hundreds of thousands of times on Channels 8, 9 and 10 since the competition started.

The Amazed Challenge was the first of several RoboChamps contests. Today, we are pleased to announce the launch of the “Sumo” Challenge, where participants will program their robots to out-navigate opponents, pushing them out of the ring in a sumo competition. The Sumo Challenge uses the Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 2008 July CTP (Community Technical Preview), released July 18.

At the end of the season, top finalists in the RoboChamps contest will travel to Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference (PDC), where they will take the code they’ve used in the simulator and apply it to real robots in a live finals competition.

http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=399952

http://www.on10.net/blogs/tina/Robo-Champs-My-robot-is-bigger-then-your-robot/

A pre-interview I did with Tina Wood just launched over at on10.net.  This has some footage of some of the 3d environments we'll be delivering.

I forgot to mention the cool 3d robot avatars for the community site (my mashupguy avatar embedded below)

For the past several months I've been working on a new project - it involves Silverlight 2.0, ASP.NET 3.5, WCF 3.5, REST, S+S, LiveID, Linq, SQL, IIS, .NET Framework 3.5, and..... robots.

That's right, I've been working on a worldwide robotics program called RoboChamps. The key thing here is we found a way for anyone to participate - we use simulation, we release content via rich commnity site chock full of training, videos, and other goodness, and we're using Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 2008, which means you can code robots in .NET. 

RoboChamps is a league, and like sports leagues, will have a regular season comprised of a series of challenges. As RoboChamps is based in simulation, we can provide you with access to environments and robots most people could never get access to - from a trapped filled maze,  to city populated with driving cars and working trffic lights, to a city struck by an earthquake, a huge soccer stadium - even the surface of the planet Mars! We'll conclude the season with a single elimination tournament, where we'll continue until we've found four finalist and.... well, I'll talk about that more later in the season, but I'll give you a hint, it involves real robots and a major event.

If you're wondering "How much is this going to cost me?", I've got good news - there's no cost to join RoboChamps, no requirement to buy software, and we'll be giving away great prizes like real robots all season long. And I almost forgot, because this is based on MIcrosoft Robotics Developer Studio 2008, there's no huge learning curve - you can use the .NET skills you already have.

If you're not into competing but want to be part of the community, that's ok too. Check out the forums, our videos, get yourself a RoboCard with a cool animated avatar, and the fun stuff we've made available in our download area. In the fun stuff section, you'll find a Vista Sidebar Gadget, desktop backgrounds, even some blog bling. And don't forget to check out 'RoboChamps - The Show', our machinima-style video podcast. Currently hosted on our homepage, 'RoboChamps - The Show' will bring you updates on what's going on in the league and check out what's new and cool in the world of robotics.

Ready to get started? Go to the website at www.robochamps.com and click on the appropriately named 'Getting Started' link on the top left of the screen and you'll be programming robots before you know it!

Marc Mercuri
RoboChamps League Commissioner
mmercuri@microsoft.com

And for those of you who think robotics has nothing to do with your day job. Think again. I'm a services guy (remember those books on WCF?), and this stuff has it's applications outside of robots. It's distributed by default, scales to the compact framework and microframework, and has a rocking asynchronous messaging library called the Concurrency and Coordination Runtime (CCR) - or as I like to call it 'ManyCore for Mere Mortals'

http://www.robochamps.com

My new project, currently underwraps, will make a brief appearance today in one of the TechReady sessions. If you're a MS employee, swing by and check it out.

The details..

Session Code: ARC325

Time: 3pm – 4:15pm

Location: WSCTC 3AB