From October 27 to 30, the KAIST System Design Innovation and Application Research Center (SDIA) hosted the 10th "Intelligent SOC Robot War" at the Korea International Exhibition Center (KINTEX) located in Ilsan. System on Chip (SoC) robots are automatons capable of recognizing objects and performing actions without any external control by human beings. Such ability is enabled by a single chip that has various components such as processors, memory, video recognition system and logic algorithm integrated in it. For this year's competition, 105 teams from 60 different Korean universities submitted their applications. Each team consisted of two to six undergraduate or graduate students. After the preliminary stage in September, only 16 teams qualified for the final round. 

 

There are two contests held separately within the Intelligent SoC Robot War. One is called the Huro-Competition, which requires the robots to complete as many missions as possible within five minutes on a straight track that has various obstacles. The impediments that hinder the robot's journey through the track include a narrow passage, stairs, a low ceiling that robots must hunch down to pass under and a moving robot that the robots entered in the competition must not come into contact with. Each team receives scores whenever its robot successfully completes a mission during its time on the track. This year, Team AIS from Seoul National University of Science and Technology came in first place for Huro-Competition.

 

The other competition is called SoC Taekwon Robot, which involves two robots dueling each other using taekwondo techniques. Whenever a robot successfully makes its attack with its hand, it receives one point. When it attacks with its foot, it earns three points; when it knocks its opponent out, it earns five points. Three rounds are held in each game and each round lasts for five minutes. Team AI from Inje University won SoC Taekwon Robot this year.

 

The head of the competitions' organizing committee Hoi-Jun Yoon, from KAIST's Department of Electrical Engineering, mentioned that "what used to be only a small gathering of six teams has now grown to be representative of robotics contests in Korea." He also stated that through the Intelligent SoC Robot War, he would continue to make efforts to develop Korean robotics technology and catch the public's attention.