This time, the Youth Robotics Lab assembled a truly star team: Dmitry Yakovlev, a first-year student in robotics and AI, and Daria Yablunina, a tenth-grade student from St. Petersburg. Both of them are weathered participants – and winners – of various highbrow contests: for Daria it’s RoboCup Russia Open 2022 and for Dmitry – RoboCup Russia Open 2021, RoboCup 2021, and RoboCup Asia-Pacific 2021.
Igor Lositsky, the head of the lab, is the team’s long-time coach. This time, he was also assisted by Evgeny Zavarin, an engineer at the lab.
The students presented their robot contestant within the Freestyle Senior category that brings together the robots that don’t fit into any other group. In this category, three judges evaluate the idea behind the robot and its implementation, its hardware and software, as well as the robot’s presentation at the contest on a scale from 1 to 5.
Robert Robotecky, the robot musician from ITMO, performed several musical pieces on the concertina while balancing on an electric gyro scooter.
“Our project is creative and has a clear implementation. It is also highly interactive as it is controlled by gesture recognition. Everything worked perfectly and that helped us win. We were also rather popular – everyone wanted to get a picture with us,” shared Dmitry Yakovlev.
Dmitry Yakovlev and Daria Yablunina demonstrating Robert Robotecky at RobotChallenge 2023. Photo courtesy of Igor Lositsky
According to Dmitry, the team of the Youth Robotics Lab is planning to create a Cybertheater, a system that will synchronize all of the lab’s robots for full-scale musical performances. This currently includes Robert Robotecky (winner of RoboCup Russia Open 2021, RoboCup 2021, and RoboCup Asia-Pacific 2021), flute player ELSA (silver medal at RoboCup Open Russia 2019), guitarist Seldon (silver medal at RoboCup Asia-Pacific 2017), as well as balalaika player Iron Henry with robot matryoshkas for support dancers (first place at RoboCup Russia Open 2022).
In the past six months, the team has successfully “taught” their robots to perform music from MIDI files, thus increasing their repertoire. Thanks to this, on the concertina, for instance, pressing and releasing the same key produces different sounds. The MIDI files contain the information on when each note has to be played, how loud and for how long. For their next endeavor, the team is planning to improve MIDI files optimization and add additional connection channels, so that the robots could perform even during Wi-Fi interference in the 2.4 Hz range.
The project is implemented jointly by ITMO’s Youth Robotics Lab and the Presidential Lyceum No. 239.
Read also:
ITMO Youth Robotics Team Wins RoboCup Russia Open 2022
ITMO Youth Robotics Team Outshine All at RoboCup Asia-Pacific 2021
RobotChallenge is an international robotics contest that has been held annually since 2004. This year, the event hosted in Beijing on August 11-13 welcomed over 3,000 participants from 24 countries. The contest’s eight categories are RoboSumo, Robot Bowling, Air Race, Humanoid Spirit, Line Follower, Puck Collect, Freestyle, and LEGO Unknown Mission – a secret task announced on the day of the competition.
