The 1994 AAAI Robot Competition and Exhibition

Exhibition was held in 1994 during the Twelfth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Seattle, Washington. The competition was designed to showcase and compare the state of the art in autonomous indoor mobile robots. The competition featured Office Delivery and Office Cleanup events, which demanded competence in navigation, object recognition, and manipulation. The competition was organized into four parts: (1) a preliminary set of trials, (2) the competition finals, (3) a public robot exhibition, and (4) a forum to discuss technical issues in AI and robotics. Over 15 robots participated in the competition and exhibition. This article describes the rationale behind the events and the rules for the competition. It also presents the results of the competition and related events and provides suggestions for the direction of future exhibitions.