The role of competitions in advancing intelligent systems

Abstract

In recent years, the number of competitions in the robotic domain has increased tremendously. This growth is spurred by the appealing nature of robots, the flexibility that they afford in competition themes due to the practically unlimited applications, and by the recognition that competitions can yield advances in a technological domain that is immature. The National Institute of Standards and Technology has supported a variety of competitions to help stimulate innovation in certain critical technologies and capabilities needed in robotics. In this paper we present some general views of competitions and discuss the experiences NIST has had with robotics competitions as catalysts for advancing the state of intelligent systems. This paper is a lead-in to others in a special session organized at the 2010 Performance Metrics for Intelligent Systems (PerMIS) workshop that describe in more detail how competitions are used to advance intelligent systems.