The final (2/6/2023)

PUB.R 2023 has finished and the winner is…

The DISCOVER team from Tsinghua University!

It was an incredibly close call, with Tsinghua DISCOVER team achieving a total score of 58%, just about beating the EPFL CREATE Team to second place with 56%.

The final (between the CREATE Team of EPFL and the DISCOVER team of Tsinghua University) of the PUB.R competition was broadcast live here:

About PUB.R

Within the framework of the 2023 edition of the ICRA conference, we invite teams to test the design and control of their robots in the Preparation and dish Up of an English Breakfast with Robots (PUB.R) competition. The competition will showcase the last advancements in food handling and preparation by challenging traditional robotics domains, including navigation, manipulation, and scene understanding, but also proposing novel scientific challenges, such as robotic food tasting, communication, creativity, and art.

Teams may comprise any combination of students, academic members, private partners, government institutions, etc., without restriction on the number of participants per team. One member of the team must be elected as Team Leader (TL) and will act as a contact point for the team.

The PUB.R competition comprises three different scenarios: Shopping, Cooking, and Serving – each challenging different research aspects integrated into a single overarching goal. In the first scenario (Shopping), a subset of spices and sauces should be collected from a pantry area, and brought to the cooking station to prepare the desired recipe. In the second scenario (Cooking), the food has to be prepared, cooked and arranged on the plate by taking into consideration taste and appearance of the final dish. In the last scenario (Serving), a robot has to serve the meal to a table for judging preparation and plate arrangement, it has to explain the dish, and answer simple questions. For all scenarios, teams are invited to bring their own robot. However, a Tiago robot and a Baxter will be provided if requested. Each scenario is split down into tasks: points are awarded by executing partially or completely each task. The team earning the maximum number of points will be considered the winner of the PUB.R Competition 2023.

Qualified Teams

Team name	University
CAMBRIDGE	University of Cambridge (UK)
DISCOVER	Tsinghua University (China)
CREATE	École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (Switzerland)

Competition Schedule

	Set-up and check	Trials	Trials	Qualification	Finals
	May-29	May-30	May-31	Jun-01	Jun-02
09:00-10:00				CREATE	Finalist1
10:00-11:00		CREATE	DISCOVER	CAMBRIDGE	Finalist2
11:00-12:00		CREATE	DISCOVER	DISCOVER
12:00-13:00		Lunch break		Finalist selection and lunch	Awards
13:00-14:00		DISCOVER	CAMBRIDGE
14:00-15:00		DISCOVER	CAMBRIDGE	Refinement Tests Finalist1
15:00-16:00		CAMBRIDGE	CREATE	Refinement Tests Finalist2
16:00-17:00		CAMBRIDGE	CREATE

Call for Participation

Important Dates:

• April 14, 2023 Deadline for submitting application and qualification material
• April 15, 2023 Acceptance notification
• April 21, 2023 Deadline for accepted teams to confirm their participation
• May 30-June 2, 2023 Competition

Qualification Material:

The teams must produce the following materials for applying:

1. A technical document describing your approach to solving at least one of the tasks in the competition. Including:
   1. a description of the overall approaches developed;
   2. expected improvements at the time of the competition;
   3. any details you consider relevant with respect to actuation, sensing, etc.;
   4. any relevant pictures.
2. A video demonstrating the skills of your robot at the current time of development.
3. Finally, the teams must fill in the application form available at: https://forms.office.com/e/he4zwaZdDJ

Details for sharing and uploading the technical document and video are provided in the application form.

Registration:

All participating members of accepted teams will need to be registered to receive a pass to enter the competition hall. A confirmation email is sufficient to register, and it should be sent to mcalisti@lincoln.ac.uk before April 21, 2023.

The competition pass will only give access to the competition hall: if you wish to gain access to the full conference, team members need to have a valid conference registration. Please refer to ICRA2023 webpage https://www.icra2023.org/welcome to register for the conference.

Competition Schedule:

Day	Date	Event
1	May 29, 2023	Teams’ arrival and registration
2	May 30, 2023	Pre-competition trials
3	May 31, 2023	Pre-competition trials
4	June 1, 2023	Competition day1
5	June 2, 2023	Competition day2 and award ceremony

Competition Rules

Details of the tasks in the Scenarios, the interpretation of the rules and the award of points are described in the following RuleBook document:

Competition FAQs:

Organising Committee

University of Lincoln

• Marcello Calisti, Associate Professor in Agri-Robotics, Lincoln Institute for Agri-Food Technology
• Francesco Del Duchetto, Lecturer in Robotics and Autonomous Systems, Lincoln Centre for Autonomous Systems
• Marc Hanheide, Professor of Intelligent Robotics & Interactive Systems, Lincoln Centre for Autonomous Systems
• Elizabeth Sklar, Professor in Agri-Robotics, Lincoln Institute for Agri-Food Technology

University of Cambridge

• Fulvio Forni, Associate Professor in Engineering, Department of Engineering
• Fumiya Iida, Professor of Robotics, Department of Engineering

Contacts

For any additional request or information, please contact: Marcello Calisti mcalisti@lincoln.ac.uk or Francesco Del Duchetto fdelduchetto@lincoln.ac.uk.