Fetch Robotics is excited to announce FetchIt! - The Fetch Robotics Mobile Manipulation Challenge a robotics challenge to take place at ICRA 2019 in Montreal. The competition winner will be awarded a Fetch Mobile Manipulator!

Competition in Brief

The competition involves having a Fetch Mobile Manipulator autonomously navigate to stations in a work cell, pick up items, operate basic machinery, place items into kits, and transport the finished kits to a drop-off location. The team that assembles the most kits within 45 min will win a Fetch Mobile Manipulation Research Robot.

Competition Robot

The robot used for the competition will be a Stock Fetch Mobile Manipulator. The robot will have Ubuntu™ 18.04 and ROS™ Melodic installed. Official Competition Robots will be provided for teams to use at the competition. Teams who have access to their own Fetch Research Platform can use their own robot as long as no major hardware modifications have been made.

Competition Tasks

The competition will focus on autonomously completing combined manipulation, and navigation tasks. The task is to assemble a kit from four objects obtained from stations around the arena. The objects may be picked from bins and/or require additional processing before being placed in a kit and transported to a drop-off location. The challenge includes the perception of objects in the environment and successfully avoiding any collisions while manipulating and transporting the objects.

Competition Environment

The competition will take place in an arena approximately 10 feet by 10 feet in size. The arena will feature stations with the items and machinery the robot needs to complete the competition tasks. The competition environment specifics will be made available before the competition for simulation. The objects which will be used for manipulation will be announced and provided to teams ahead of time, and will be both detectable and manipulable with the Fetch Mobile Manipulator.

Qualification

Applicant teams must submit via email a team description paper summarizing the team, research area and software stack. Emails should be sent to opensource@fetchrobotics.com The document should be in PDF format, should not be longer than 6 pages and it must include:

  • Team name
  • Team leader name
  • Total Number of team members
  • Affiliation
  • Contact information
  • Links to Video of robot (or simulation) performing manipulation tasks
  • Additional information can include:
    • Software stack description and overview
    • Research Focus and overview
    • Additional Publication Links
    • Other robots (videos of demos if possible)
    • Other competition results and history


Deadlines

  • Jan 31: RuleBook released
  • Feb 1: early bird qualification opens
  • Feb 15: early bird qualification deadline
  • Feb 20: early bird qualification announcement
  • Mar 10: qualification deadline
  • Mar 20: qualification announcement
  • April: remote access to robot and environment via VPN for qualified teams
  • May 20: ICRA 2019


Sign Up for Updates

The detailed rule book, mailing list sign-up, qualification submission and any additional competition information will be provided via this website.

For questions, please contact opensource@fetchrobotics.com