THE 1996 AAAI MOBILE ROBOT COMPETITION AND EXHIBITION

The Fifth Annual AAAI Mobile Robot Competition and Exhibition was held in Portland, Oregon, in conjunction with the Thirteenth National Conf erence on Artificial Intelligence. The competition consisted of two ev ents: (1) Office Navigation and (2) Clean Up the Tennis Court. The fir st event stressed navigation and planning. The second event stressed v ision sensing and manipulation. In addition to the competition there w as a mobile robot exhibition in which teams demonstrated robot behavio rs that did not fit into the competition tasks. The competition and ex hibition were unqualified successes, with nearly 20 teams competing. T he robot competition raised the standard for autonomous mobile robotic s, demonstrating the intelligent integration of perception, deliberati on, and action.