Objective

The World Robot Summit (WRS), an international robotics event hosted by METI and NEDO, will be held in Tokyo in 2018 and in Aichi and Fukushima in 2020. WRS is comprised of a robot competition that consists of nine challenges in four categories and an exhibition. WRS aims to accelerate the research and development (R&D) and practical implementation of robots, in both the personal and industrial sectors of society.

Outline

World Robot Summit Official Website
http://worldrobotsummit.org/en/

Introduction of the World Robot Summit 1

Title: Drones and Robots for Ecologically Sustainable Societies / Promotion of International Standardization Related to Robots and Drones / De Facto Standard (FY2017-2018) FY2017 Annual Report

The World Robot Summit (WRS), an international robotics event hosted by METI and NEDO, will be held in Tokyo in 2018 and in Aichi and Fukushima in 2020. WRS is comprised of a robot competition that consists of nine challenges in four categories and an exhibition. WRS aims to accelerate the research and development (R&D) and practical implementation of robots, in both the personal and industrial sectors of society.

1) Overall, we had regular committee meetings for each category and advanced the R&D for the competitions and exhibition. To increase public awareness and gather participants for WRS, we widely conducted public relations activities through demonstrations, presentations, website updates, posters, handouts, etc. By conducting trial competitions, we were able to create, improve, and announce the rules for all of the challenges. We opened the call for participants from November 2017 to March 2018.

2) In the Industrial Robotics Category, we set up gear unit assembly tasks and held a trial competition for the Assembly Challenge at the 2017 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems in Vancouver, Canada. Moreover, we held a demonstration of the tasks at the International Robot Exhibition 2017 (iREX 2017) held in Tokyo. We improved and finalized the rules for WRS2018. Moreover, several robot arms were chosen and became available as platform robots for the challenge.

3) In the Service Robotics Category, Toyota’s robot “HSR” was chosen as the platform robot for the Partner Robot Challenge (Real Space). For this challenge, we held hands-on exhibitions at RoboCup 2017 and iREX 2017 in Tokyo and Nagoya respectively. We also held a trial competition of the Future Convenience Store Challenge in Sendai, where a total of ten domestic teams participated in stocking/disposing, customer relations, and toilet cleaning tasks. Moreover, we developed a simulator called SIGVerse for the Partner Robot Challenge (Virtual Space). We obtained necessary knowledge for preparing the rules and operations for WRS2018.

4) In the Junior Category (for participants aged 19 or younger), SoftBank’s robot “Pepper” was chosen as the platform robot for the School Robot Challenge. We held workshops and trial competitions for the School Robot Challenge in Tokyo in August 2017 and for the Home Robot Challenge in Bangkok, Thailand in December 2017.

5）The Disaster Robotics Category is comprised of 1) Plant Disaster Prevention Challenge that inspects or maintains infrastructures based on set standards; 2) Tunnel Disaster Response and Recovery Challenge that collects information and provides emergency response in case of a tunnel disaster; and 3) Standard Disaster Robotics Challenge that assesses standard performance levels required in disaster prevention and responses using developed Standard Performance Test Methods (STM). We held demonstrations at RoboCup 2017 and iREX 2017 as well as a trial competition based on the rules of New STM Challenges in Minamisoma in March 2018 to improve operations and rules of the challenges.