IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - March 2021 - 11

FIRA Robot World Cup 2020 had to
be canceled.
However, feedback from the community showed that there was a lot of
interest in hosting a virtual/online
event. Therefore, we created the FIRA
2020 Social Distancing Edition (SDE)
competition, which was held online
from 5 to 8 August 2020. Of course,
FIRA's simulation league and similar
events could adapt easily. But how could
we organize a virtual event for the physical robot leagues, e.g., the humanoid
robot competition HuroCup?
FIRA headquarters made the best of
the constraints imposed by the COVID-19
pandemic and created an event based on
the tele-operation of humanoid robots
via the Internet. The organizers also
changed the theme of the event to reflect
the impact of COVID-19.
Tele-operation of complex robots is a
nontrivial challenge. The operator
receives information only from the point
of view of the robot, in contrast to
remote control, where an operator has a
global view of the environment. So we
designed several challenges in the teleoperation of humanoid robots for healthcare applications [the Health Care
Tele-Op Challenge (HCTC)].
Many robotics labs were closed during
the summer, but the Taiwanese government had acted quickly and decidedly at
the onset of the pandemic. Therefore, the
robotics lab at the National Taiwan Normal University in Taipei was able to host
the event.
Similar to HuroCup, the HCTC
comprises a variety of tasks that mimic
the use of a humanoid robot in a medical facility, where such robots could
help protect medical personnel. The
FIRA chairs developed the following
rules for the event. A robot had to
1) follow a line on the floor
2) navigate through an unknown environment (similar to the HuroCup
obstacle run competition)
3) open a door
4) measure the temperature of a simulated patient
5) deliver medicine.
Eight teams registered for the
HCTC. After initial testing, three teams
qualified for the final, which consisted

of two separate rounds; the maximum
score for any round was used to rank
the robots. The winning team, Yubo
Chen from China, completed all challenges in 20 min (see Figure 1).
Recent events have brought the
social responsibility of scientists to the
foreground. The negative effect of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies on
minorities, often caused by biased training data, has been widely publicized and
has led to an accompanying push for
explainable AI.
Given that many people are struggling during these trying times, the
FIRA community decided that, instead
of charging the usual registration fee for
the FIRA 2020 SDE, each participant
had to present proof of donating the
equivalent of US$20 to a local charity.
This allowed all participants to find
causes that they felt strongly about and

make a difference in their local community. For example, some Brazilian team
members prepared food baskets for the
homeless in their area.
This proved to be a successful initiative, with several team members donating more than the minimum. So FIRA
2020 SDE resulted in US$1,200 in donations to local charities.
Acknowledgments
This research was partially supported
by the Higher Education Sprout Project
and Center of Learning Technology
for Chinese of the National Taiwan
Normal University, sponsored by the
Ministry of Education, Taiwan, and
also funded partially by the Ministry
of Science and Technology, Taiwan,
under grants 109-2221-E-003-019 and
109-2634-F-003-009.

MARCH 2021

IEEE ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION MAGAZINE

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IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - March 2021

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