Kaa Dashboard in 2022 Robothon® Grand Challenge

It was another successful year for the Robothon® Grand Challenge that united teams from all over the world for four weeks of inspiration and environmental awareness driven by cutting-edge technologies.

In 2022, Robothon® received 27 international team applications, and selected 80 developers to participate in the challenge. You can check out the full list of participating teams here. Organized by the Munich Institute of Robotics and Machine Intelligence’s high-tech platform, Munich_i, in partnership with the Messe München at Automatica, the action-packed event was a unique opportunity for robotics knowledge-sharing and networking.

The Kaa Dashboard was used to track the distributed event’s progress and help the prize jury choose a winning team working in their home labs based on the best strategy, robustness, speed of execution, and greatest potential impact on the environment. Each team had to bring their own e-waste object and build a robot that would disassemble this object and extract a battery. Teams received their own task boards and won cash prizes after presenting their results.

Out of 20 participating teams this year, five teams received cash prizes; Team CARI from Italy took first place with €10,000, sponsored by Huawei; the second place prize of €4,000, sponsored by Siemens, was taken by Team Singularitas from Slovenia; Team RoboTechX MDX from the UAE won third place with €2,000 sponsored by Siemens, and finally, Team RoboPig from Germany and Team MMR UAS Technikum Vienna from Austria both received honorable mentions and were awarded €1,000, sponsored by Siemens.

Contest participants were challenged to use the same algorithms developed for solving the task board to disassemble their own e-waste device. From calculators to laser pointers, toys, label printers, to digital cameras teams demonstrated their ability to transfer manipulation skills from the task board to a wide range of e-waste devices.Dismantling of electronic waste is repetitive and dangerous work that can be greatly assisted by robotics and AI, as proven by the event’s winners.

This international competition is now inviting young talent and researchers, as well as seasoned experts and academics, to solve real world challenges for a circular economy in 2023. In challenges like these, the AI Industrial revolution is winning people's hearts and helping to build a greener, more sustainable future.