IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON EDUCATION, VOL. 54, NO.

4, NOVEMBER 2011

569

Ten Years of Cybertech: The Educational Benets of Bullghting Robotics

Miguel Hernando, Member, IEEE, Ramn Galn, Iaki Navarro, Member, IEEE, and Diego Rodrguez-Losada, Member, IEEE
given by the contest rules. They must tackle the different stages of engineering (analysis of requirements, design, verication, and redesign) while constrained by budget and time limitations. Moreover, they have to integrate interdisciplinary skills from mechanics, electronics, and computer science and learn how to work in teams. There are dozens of different competitionssome of them oriented toward pushing new research frontiers like the annual Robot Competition and Exhibition sponsored by the American Association for Articial Intelligence (AAAI) since 1992 [7] or like the RoboCup Urban Search and Rescue competition [8] and robot soccer competition [9]. Others, like Fireghting Robot [10], Robocup Junior [11], Micromouse Contest [12], Eurobot [13], and Hispabot [14], are focused on teaching and education. Both types of competitions attract potential students to engineering studies. Cybertech is a competition organized by the Universidad Politcnica de Madrid (UPM), Madrid, Spain. It has been held annually since 2001, with an increasing participation, and is currently open to undergraduate students from universities worldwide. The contest has become famous in Spain, mainly due to the Robotics Bullghting competition, but achieving fame was not the primary goal. Cybertechs main aim is educational, trying to interest UPM students in discovering the problems presented by real engineering applications and learning how to work in teams. Therefore, students participating in the competition can follow a course where they are taught the basic topics they will need to develop their robots. The experience accumulated since 2001 has produced an exceptional tool for training engineers. This paper will share the experience gained, describing the goals, the contest structure changes, and their consequences over the years. Since the rst edition, the contest-related course has been considered an essential part of the Cybertech concept. Nevertheless, over the years, different competitions, lectures, and practical courses have been carried out in order to achieve the educational objective. In Section II, the current conguration of the contest and its different events are explained along with its evolution over the years. The related course is described in Section III. In Section IV, the description of results and statistics is given. Finally, conclusions and proposal for future editions are described in Section V. II. CYBERTECH CONTEST The competition consists of several independent events that have evolved over the contest editions. Line Following, Maze, Solar Cars, RoboSim, and Bullghting events are those included in the most recent edition.

AbstractAfter 10 years of organizing the Cybertech robotics competition, this paper presents this unique and innovative educational experience of teaching engineering at Universidad Politcnica de Madrid (UPM), Spain. Cybertech is not only a well-known robotic contest in Spain due to the Robotaurus bullghting, but is also a whole academic activity spanning theory, laboratory practical lessons, seminars, tutoring, and a spectacular contest in which robots, developed by the students, compete. It is an open activity, for all students and grades, requiring knowledge of various subjects such as mechanics, microcontrollers, control, and electronics. The experience acquired has shown how this novel educational approach can boost the motivation of students, who in a real applied project effectively learn not only the particular subject matter, but also skills in teamwork, oral presentations, budget management, and so on. This is considered the agship of innovation in education at UPM. This paper describes the evolution of Cybertech over the past 10 years, summarizes the educational experience, and provides some statistics and results as well as a perspective for future editions of the competition. Index TermsEducation, interdisciplinary curricula, robotics contest, robotics workshop.

I. INTRODUCTION

URING their university studies, as well as learning a great deal of specic knowledge, students must also develop their social capacity, professional behavior, and innovation skills. In addition, the rapid development of new knowledge in computer science and electromechanical engineering makes it challenging effectively to integrate new material into the various courses. Therefore, the development of activities that offer an opportunity of combining different branches of knowledge, and that both inspire and value students initiative and imagination, is a signicant contribution to university education. Robotic competitions, where students have to design, build, and test a robot to compete against other machines, are widespread around the world. They provide many benets in terms of both learning and increasing motivation toward engineering, as is shown in [1][6]. Students have to deal with real-world problems, building a device that must fulll specications

Manuscript received May 03, 2010; revised September 09, 2010; accepted November 14, 2010. Date of publication December 06, 2010; date of current version November 02, 2011. M. Hernando and D. Rodrguez-Losada are with the Departamento de Electrnica, Automtica e Informtica Industrial (ELAI), Escuela Universitaria de Ingeniera Tcnica Industrial (EUITI), Universidad Politcnica de Madrid, Madrid 28012, Spain (e-mail: miguel.hernando@upm.es). R. Galn and I. Navarro are with the Divisin de Ingeniera de Sistemas y Automtica (DISAM), Escuela Tcnica Superior de Ingenieros Industriales (ETSII), Universidad Politcnica de Madrid, Madrid 28006, Spain. Digital Object Identier 10.1109/TE.2010.2095014

0018-9359/$26.00 2010 IEEE

570

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON EDUCATION, VOL. 54, NO. 4, NOVEMBER 2011

Fig. 1. Three phases of the Line Following event. Fig. 2. (Left) Circuit for the Solar Car event. (Right) One of the prototypes presented.

A. Line Following Event This is the only event that has been present since the beginning of the competition with a structure that has remained essentially unchanged. Students who compete for the rst time are encouraged to begin with this easiest event, which allows them to face the practical problems that arise during the competitions. It consists of three consecutive phases, represented schematically in Fig. 1. The rst of these is a qualifying phase, in which robots simply must follow a black ellipse painted on a white surface. The second is the classifying phase, in which the time spent by the robots in going from one extreme of a complex line to another is registered. This line has many curves, junctions, and forks with signs painted on the ground indicating the shortest path. To make the competition more appealing and dynamic, the robots compete in pairs, with each robot on a different circuit and both circuits having the same shape. The third phase is the race phase and consists of the quarternals, seminals, and nal races. The registered times in the classifying phase are used to assign positions in the starting grid for robots competing in the quarternals; a better time implies a better starting position. Four robots compete in each race, and only the winner and the runner-up go on to the next round. Therefore, at the end, there is a nal race in which the four best robots compete. In these races, robots are free to follow either of the two lines that dene the road or to run between them if they are able to. In any case, xed obstacles are included to prevent a robot following the same line all the time. In addition, two or more robots can follow one line at the same time, forcing the second robot to overtake the rst in order to win. Thanks to the increasing difculty of the event, beginners and experienced participants can compete at the same time. Placing the more difcult tasks in the last rounds ensures that the best robots get better rankings. Overtaking and obstacles also make the event more interesting for the public since there is more interaction among the robots. B. Maze Event The Maze event lets novice students learn the basics of mobile robotics and mechatronics, enabling them to move to more difcult events when they are more experienced. The Maze event is similar to the Micromouse Contest [11], where robots have to get out of a maze as fast as possible. The maze has an entrance where the robot starts and an exit that it has to reach. Each robot has to travel through the maze in the minimum time. The maze is changed from round to round. This competition was included as part of the contest in 2004 to promote the implementation of planning and learning algorithms so students could apply their

knowledge of heuristics and articial intelligence that they had studied in their syllabus. C. Solar Cars Event The Solar Cars event is designed to interest students in new sources of energy while they learn about power electronics. It was included in 2007 as a response to both the increasing use of standard electronics for building the robots and the recent trends in renewable energies. In this event, participants must design and build a car that moves by using only solar energy. The cars must be able to run along a predened circuit that includes a ramp and a shaded area (Fig. 2). Batteries are not allowed, and the amount of stored energy is restricted (the maximum capacitor or equivalent must be under 200 F). For this challenge, the participants mainly develop the electronic power system and the chassis with motors. The car does not need to turn because it follows a rail on the oor, so the designers can concentrate on the power problems. The solar panel is provided by the organizing committee. This event has two phases, in the same way as the classifying and race phases of the Line Following event. The best lap time from several individual trials is registered in the classication phase. These times are used to organize the second-phase races, in which cars compete in pairs. In the last round, the two best solar cars compete for rst and second position. D. RoboSim Event In the RoboSim event, participants must develop a computer program to control a virtual robot that moves in a simulated maze. Robots must interact while avoiding falling into traps; their goal is to nd the way out of the maze. This event is not multidisciplinary in that students just need to program, but this has the advantage of allowing them to develop more complicated algorithms. This event was included in 2007, with the intention of enhancing the development of the prototypes from the point of view of articial intelligence. RoboSim is run on a platform developed at the UPM specically for this purpose and is based on the board game RoboRally [14]. It is a system that allows easy and rapid development of servers and clients. The representation of the virtual world is grid-shaped, and the clientserver communication is achieved via TCP-IP sockets. A screenshot of the simulated environment with a few robots competing is shown in Fig. 3. The participants program connects to the main server where a maze is stored. The program

HERNANDO et al.: EDUCATIONAL BENEFITS OF BULLFIGHTING ROBOTICS

571

Fig. 3. Screenshot of the RoboSim event.

must act as a robot in the maze, which presents different kinds of challenges: bonus opportunities, which add points to the robots score, and obstacles such as re or slippery ground as shown in Fig. 3, which subtract points from the robots score. There are several rounds, and all participants in each round play simultaneously. The rst to reach the target earns extra points. At each simulation cycle, each virtual robot receives an update of the map information with all the robot positions and must then give a simple robot command: turn left/right, go forward/backward. E. Bullghting Event The Bullghting is the event that really makes the competition unique. In 2002, after the successful rst edition, the organization decided to boost the media impact of Cybertech by including a new event, which was also designed to combine the different research elds of the organizing department: robotics, articial vision, articial intelligence, and process control. In this new competition, each team has to build a bullghter robot that ghts in the arena against a bull robot, the Robotaurus, provided by the organization. The bullghter robot must show its bullghting skills to survive against the Robotaurus attacks. Each bullghter robot must wear a red balloon attached around its body at a certain predened height. The most basic behavior of the bull robot is to pursue and attack moving red objects. The front of the Robotaurus is equipped with sharp horns used to prick the bullghters balloon. The bullghter robot is considered to be dead when the balloon is pricked, so its main mission is to keep it safe. The bullghter must be autonomous. All sensors and processing units must be inside the robot; the only exception is the information about the positions of the robots, which is provided by the organization and transmitted by a radio link. Each robot can carry a red cape outside its body in order to deceive the bull robot by making it follow the cape, thus avoiding injury to the balloon. The arena where the robots ght consists of a circle of 4 m diameter surrounded by a wall 20 cm high. The surface is divided in an inner white circle of 3 m diameter and a black external ring 50 cm wide. The bullghter robot should conne its movements to within the white circle. Any action performed in the black zone will not be considered in the score. In Fig. 4,

Fig. 4. Bullghting event. (Upper left) Detail of the Robotaurus head. (Upper right) Overall view of the arena during the contest. (Bottom) Bullght.

photographs of the arena with the robots, of the Robotaurus, and of a bullght are shown. An overhead camera overlooks the arena and is connected to a computer that tracks the positions of both robots. This information, along with the data from the on-board robot camera, is used by the computer to control the actions of the Robotaurus. Thus, the robot controller takes into account the positions of both robots, the red color observed by the Robotaurus, and the elapsed time. The longer the bullghter robot survives in the arena, the more aggressive the bull robot becomes. The computer sends the motor commands to the bull robot via a radio link. In addition, information about the positions of both robots is sent to the bullghter robot so that it can incorporate this into its decisions. More technical details about the implementation of this system and about the behavior of the bull robot are given in [15]. Bullghter robots face the bull robot one by one, earning a score that depends on the time they stay alive in the arena (i.e., how long they keep the red balloon safe) and on the difculty of the movements they make around the bull robot. This last score is subjective, decided by a panel composed of three professors. Their decision, as in real bullghting, depends on how many times the bullghting robot passes in front of the bull robot, how close it comes, and the reactions of the public to the performance. A better score is obtained by making good use of the cape and making the bull robot pass under it. No score is earned if the bullghter robot simply escapes all the time from the bull robot without approaching it. Each of the robots must show its abilities in a maximum of four different 3-min rounds. The winner of the competition is the competitor with the highest total for the sum of the scores of their best three rounds. In each round, the bullghter robot gets one point for every 10 s that it remains in the arena without being injured, and 10 extra points if it is able to avoid being injured for the whole 3 min. The panel awards between 0 and 20 additional points per round according to the bullghting skills of the bullghter robot.

572

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON EDUCATION, VOL. 54, NO. 4, NOVEMBER 2011

Fig. 5. Bullght during the competition of the international course.

F. International Competition The main novelty in the 2008 edition was the inclusion of a parallel international course and competition on mobile robotics. The course was self-contained. Students with basic knowledge of computer science, electronics, and/or mechanics built and programmed a mobile robot using a commercial kit. The course nished with a small competition, a simplied version of the Bullghting event, between the different teams. This course was organized in collaboration with the Board of European Students of Technology (BEST), a nonprot organization aimed at internationalizing students of technology via complementary education abroad. Forty students from 20 different European countries visited Madrid for one week to follow the course and participate in the competition while learning about the different European cultures. The course was given in English by Ph.D. students under the supervision of a senior professor. The 40 students were divided into 10 groups with four students each. Each groups members had different nationalities and background skills. On the rst day, the students were given basic concepts and ideas about mobile robotics and mechatronics. In addition, they built the robots using the commercial kits and performed some software tests using basic examples. On the second day, the teams prepared their strategies for the competition and designed the modications in the mechanical structure of the robots. The third and fourth days were spent on the implementation and testing of the algorithms for the Bullghting event. The competition took place on the fth day. Each team had to build the robot and develop two different programs to be run on the same platform: one to have the robot act as the bull, and the other to act as the bullghter. An image of a bullght and the robots used in the international course can be seen in Fig. 5. The results of the competition were highly satisfactory. The 10 teams robots worked properly, being able to display their bull-like qualities and their bullghting skills. This was quite impressive since the students had only one week to build and program the robots. III. RELATED COURSE Currently, Spain is immersed in adapting its university degrees to the so-called Bologna Model [16]. The purpose of the Bologna Accords is to create the European Higher Education Area by making academic degree standards and quality assurance standards more convergent and compatible throughout Europe. The structure of university degrees in Spain was quite

different to this new European model, which mainly follows the Anglo-Saxon structure [17]. In Spain, engineering degrees have traditionally encompassed ve- or six-year higher engineering degrees and three-year technical engineering degrees. In the rst edition of Cybertech in 2001, the Industrial Engineering degree was a six-year program. The rst three years mostly provided a core formation in mathematics, physics, chemistry, and mechanics. During the last three years, a more technological formation was provided, focused on the specialty chosen by the student. Those specialties were metallurgy, chemical, electrical, mechanical, electronic, or industrial organization engineering. The aim of this structure was to produce a professional able to cope with almost all the issues that the industry usually faces. This arrangement of the curriculum meant that students in their rst years of study who dared to participate in Cybertech lacked the necessary skills to deal with the challenges of the competition. Therefore, the organizing committee included from the outset a series of lectures and practical classes designed to equip students with the basic tools needed to participate, as well as comprehensive tutorial support and physical space and facilities. The success of these optional classes encouraged the organization to create a new course associated with the contest, which has been offered to UPM students since 2005. The main objective of this course is that students learn how to design and build an autonomous robot following a set of specications. Currently, this is included as an optional course in several UPM engineering degrees (industrial engineering, telecommunications engineering, computer science engineering, aeronautics engineering, etc.). Therefore, there are two kinds of participants in Cybertech: those who only want to participate in the contest and those who are registered in the course. In Fig. 6, a owchart summarizes the Cybertech event, including the contest and the course. As reected in the chart, a student who wants to take the course has to attend the Practical Workshops and the plenary lectures and complete a set of compulsory tasks before the exam. To pass the course, they also have to present a working robot able to participate at least in one of the events of the competition. A. Cybertech Presentation Every Cybertech edition starts with a series of actions designed to attract the attention of students at the beginning of the academic year. It is important to highlight the motivational approach that drives all the Cybertech activities. With this idea in mind, the presentations of Cybertech are not typical lectures, but rather are multimedia shows in which advertising of Cybertech, real robots moving around, and amusing talks combine in a live show very attractive for young students. All these outreach activities end with a presentation in the plenary hall of the college, which can accommodate up to 400 people and is usually full of students. B. Workshops The aim of the workshops is to give the students a general idea of mobile robotics. The 4-h-long workshops are focused on teaching the students the basics of how to develop a mobile

HERNANDO et al.: EDUCATIONAL BENEFITS OF BULLFIGHTING ROBOTICS

573

instance, in 2005 the topic was eld robotics, and one of the lectures was given by the Spanish astronaut Pedro Duque, who explained how different robots worked in space. Since then, all the conferences are highly appreciated by the students, demonstrating how people are always interested in robots. In 2006, the lectures focused on articial intelligence; in 2007, they were about climate change and solar energy. In 2008, there were three lectures on art and its relationship to robots. During the 2008 conference, several presenters showed how they could transform old computers and mechatronics systems into different sculptures or music instruments. A lecture was given by Carlos Corpa, who showed how he and a computer science colleague developed the poet robot PaCo. D. Tutorships Once the students complete the workshops, each team is assigned a tutor. Usually one tutor has up to ve groups per year. The students must talk to their tutor regularly and report their progress. The tutor must answer the students questions and, depending on their skill level, encourage them to seek more accurate solutions to their problems. The manuals, FAQs, and accumulated experience are updated yearly on the ofcial Web page of Cybertech [18]. A very useful tool for the successful development of the robots is the Web forum where students, organizations, and tutors continuously exchange information and solve problems. E. Presentations and Compulsory Tasks Any team including a student who is enrolled in the course must present their work in public. The presentation has a maximum duration of 10 min and must explain the main mechanical and electronic parts of the design. As the presentations take place some months before the contest, the teams are encouraged to present their robots as their best possible design. This also serves to encourage the teams to work on their robots early enough before the contest, thus avoiding the presentation of last-minute prototypes in the exams. For these reasons, in 2010, in addition to this presentation, before the exam students also had to accomplish a set of compulsory tasks, distributed over three consecutive weeks. F. Exams and Grades Prior to the contest, the teams have an exam to verify their prototypes. These exams are usually small events, similar to those in the contest, in which the participants must show that their robots are good enough to participate in the real events. The nal grade is calculated using the following equation:

Fig. 6. Flowchart summarizing the whole Cybertech event.

robot able to participate in one or more of the Cybertech challenges. During these workshops, the students begin to develop their prototypes, but they are expected to complete them on their own, so they can use their imagination. The workshops in 2010 were the following. 1) Basic Notions on Microcontrollers and Electronics: This was dedicated to soldering the main control board and understanding its different hardware subsystems. 2) Programming the Microcontroller: During the second practical class, the students learned how the microcontroller works and how to program it, developing and executing some small programs on the board previously built. 3) Motors and Servomotors: In the third workshop, the basics of motor control were explained, and the students operated small servomotors. 4) ADC and Sensors: During the fourth workshop, students were taught how to work with some of the usual sensors (CNY70, GP2D12, ultrasonic sensors, and CMOS cameras). Simple hardware signal lters were built, and some of the simplest sensors were connected and tested in this workshop. 5) Control Architectures: The architectures for the control of mobile robots were explained in the last session. Programming tricks and some specic algorithms, like the discrete implementation of a PD controller, were explained and tested on the control board. C. Plenary Lectures The course is complemented with three lectures about a common topic, given by experts in the related elds. For

The most important result is the position in the contest (C). If a team wins in any of the events, it receives a top mark (10), but it is only necessary to attend to obtain 5 points out of 10. The exam (E) and the presentations (P) have equal weights. Finally, the tutor (T) can give different grades to each team member depending on their work.

574

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON EDUCATION, VOL. 54, NO. 4, NOVEMBER 2011

Fig. 7. Participation in the competition and in the course.

Fig. 9. Progress in theoretical and practical knowledge. Each participant has to evaluate (from 0 to 100) how Cybertech has contributed to their progress in several subjects. The chart shows the average of the answers.

Fig. 10. Motivation of the participants. Each participant has to evaluate (from 0 to 100) the motivating factors for their participation. The chart shows the average of the answers. Fig. 8. Prole of the participants. Each participant had to answer the question: From 0 to 100: How do you rate your contribution to the team in the area of. . .? The chart shows the average of these answers.

IV. ASSESSMENT Cybertech has been held annually since 2001 with an increasing participation, starting with 96 students in the rst year and reaching 181 in the 2007 edition. The Cybertech course started in 2005, when 70 students enrolled, increasing to 89 in the 2008 edition. In Fig. 7, a chart summarizing the participation over various editions is presented. During 2009, for administrative reasons, it was impossible to organize the contest until the middle of the academic year. Consequently, the number of participants decreased considerably due to the limited registration time. In the most recent edition (April 2010), the contest participants were asked to complete a statistical survey form with four separate sections. The rst asked the students about their specic contribution to the team. The average prole of the participants is shown in Fig. 8. Although this kind of contest is mainly oriented to students of electronics and computer sciences, almost all the teams decided to have one or more members considering themselves as expert in mechanics. The chart shows a balanced formation of team members. By coordination, it is understood that the student considers him/herself as a good team maker, able to work in a team and coordinate its work. The second section evaluates the progress in theoretical and practical knowledge. For each area, the applicant has to assign a percentage value related to how they assess their progress on each subject. The majority of the students reported considerable progress in most of them. As it is shown in Fig. 9, the highest grades were given for sensors, teamwork, and electronics. The survey results are very similar to [6].

In the third section of the survey, the students were also asked about the factors motivating their participation (Fig. 10). Again, the results are very similar to [6]. The prizes are not especially signicant for the students, who are usually more interested in creativity, acquisition of practical knowledge, and the pleasure of robot gaming. The nal section of the survey focused on the effect that Cybertech can have on the academic orientation of the students. Almost all the students (83%) responded that the competition had increased their interest in robotics and electronics. Of the participants, 47% thought that Cybertech had encouraged them to orient their career toward research, although only 41% wanted to continue to a Masters degree in robotics. V. CONCLUSION AND UPCOMING EDITIONS Both the Cybertech competition and its related course have been a success in all of their editions, taking into account the number of students, the educational benets, and how the robots worked during the competition, exams, and preliminary tests. Students learn not only the related subjects (electronics, programming, articial intelligence, control, etc.), but also teamwork, budget management, and project management. From the beginning, the level of creativity and initiative shown by the students has always been surprising, giving sometimes startling technological solutions. For example, in 2001, one of the line-following robots was based on a car powered by a gasoline engine. In 2002, another team presented a two-wheeled robot that controlled its inclination with the help of a ywheel. Both designs were carried out by second-year students. The reasons for this success are many. First of all, the initial presentation at the beginning of the academic year motivates a

HERNANDO et al.: EDUCATIONAL BENEFITS OF BULLFIGHTING ROBOTICS

575

lot of the students to participate in the course and competition. According to the polls, students are more driven by the desire to learn and by enjoyment of the competition rather than by the competition prizes or the credits for the course. In addition, the quality of the robots and their operation increased a lot with the introduction of the workshops and tutorship, and as a consequence, some of the event rules were modied to make them more competitive and attractive. It is important to point out that since the events present different challenges, it is not just new students who can participate; previous students are also motivated to participate in more complex competition events, increasing their abilities. Other benets arise from the way Cybertech is organized. Almost every year, the nal phase is covered by the mass media, and the robotic bullghting is consequently well known. High school students who visit the university to see the competition get interested in the engineering degrees offered by the university. Students participating in the contest and competition get interested in the Masters programs offered by the organizing department. Lastly, students who act as teachers in the workshops get their rst teaching experiences. Currently, Cybertech is preparing for the 2011 edition. On its 10th anniversary, the organization will introduce several changes to improve both the course and the contest. First, an inheritance program is being established so that teams who participate regularly in the contest will replace their older members with new students. These teams are normally groups of students who registered in the course when they were in their second year at university and who kept participating in the contest every year, improving their robots. It is to the contests advantage that when someone in the team no longer wants to participate in the next edition, the team can choose a new member of their group from among several young applicants. These applicants should write a letter of application, introducing themselves, explaining why they want to become the new team member, and highlighting their skills. Second, the RoboSim event will be replaced with a Soccer League. This contest is based on the RoboCup Soccer Simulator, and it is intended to form groups who will be able to participate in the real RoboCup contest. This innovation introduces a path to participating in the big robot competitions that are held around the world. REFERENCES
[1] R. Murphy, Competing for a robotics education, IEEE Robot. Autom. Mag., vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 4455, Jun. 2001. [2] C. A. Chung and L. Anneberg, Robotics contests and computer science and engineering education, in Proc. 33rd Annu. Frontiers Educ. Conf., Boulder, CO, Nov. 2003, vol. 2, pp. F1F-8F1F-13. [3] D. J. Ahlgren and I. Verner, An international view of robotics as an educational medium, in Proc. Int. Conf. Eng. Educ., Manchester, U.K., Aug. 2002, pp. 1822. [4] M. Asada, R. DAndrea, A. Birk, H. Kitano, and M. Veloso, Robotics in edutainment, in Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. Robot. Autom., 2000, vol. 1, pp. 795800. [5] I. M. Verner and D. J. Ahlgren, Robot contest as a laboratory for experiential engineering education., J. Educ. Resources Comput., vol. 4, no. 2, pp. 115, 2004. [6] D. Pack, R. Avanzato, D. Ahlgren, and I. M. Verner, Fire-ghting mobile robotics and interdisciplinary design-comparative perspectives, IEEE Trans. Educ., vol. 47, no. 3, pp. 369376, Aug. 2004.

[7] I. Nourbakhsh, S. Morse, C. Becker, M. Balabanovic, R. Simmons, S. Goodridge, H. Potlapalli, D. Hinke, K. Jung, and D. Van Vactor, The winning robots from the 1993 robot competition, AI Mag., vol. 14, no. 4, pp. 5162, 1993. [8] K. Osuka, R. Murphy, and A. Schultz, USAR competitions for physically situated robots, IEEE Robot. Autom. Mag., vol. 9, no. 3, pp. 2633, Sep. 2002. [9] T. Brunl, Research relevance of mobile robot competitions, IEEE Robot. Autom. Mag., vol. 6, no. 4, pp. 3237, Dec. 1999. [10] I. M. Verner and D. J. Ahlgren, Fire-ghting robot contest: Interdisciplinary design curricula in college and high school, J. Eng. Educ., vol. 91, pp. 355360, Jul. 2002. [11] N. Chen, An updated micromouse competition, in Proc. 26th Annu. Frontiers Educ. Conf., Nov. 1996, vol. 3, pp. 10571059. [12] V. Nicosia, C. Spampinato, and C. Santoro, Software agents for autonomous robots: The Eurobot 2006 experience, in Proc. 7th WOA 2006 Workshop, Catania, Italy, Sep. 2006, pp. 9095. [13] J. Pastor, Alcabot-Hispabot autonomous robot competition in Spain, in Proc. Eurobot Workshop Educ. Robot., Catania, Italy, 2006, pp. 109118. [14] Roborally.com, unofcial site for Roborally 2010 [Online]. Available: http://www.roborally.com [15] I. Lafoz, A. Mora, D. Rodriguez-Losada, M. Hernando, and A. Barrientos, Behavior control architecture for a life-like creature: The Robotaurus, in Proc. 11th IEEE Int. Workshop Robot Human Interactive Commun., 2002, pp. 542547. [16] B. Wachter, The Bologna Process: Developments and prospects, Eur. J. Educ., vol. 39, no. 3, pp. 265273, 2004. [17] A. Duran, Y. B. Moon, and E. Giraldo, Work in progressThe European Higher Education Area (Bologna Process) in engineering education in Spain, in Proc. 39th IEEE FIE, Oct. 1821, 2009, pp. 12. [18] Cybertech robot competitions, UPM, Madrid, Spain [Online]. Available: http://www.disam.upm.es/~cybertech Miguel Hernando (M02) was born in Madrid, Spain, in 1973. He received the M.Sc. degree in electronics (industrial engineering) and Ph.D. degree in robotics and computer vision from the Universidad Politcnica de Madrid (UPM), Madrid, Spain, in 1997 and 2003, respectively. He is currently an Associate Professor at the UPM, where he is also with the Robotics and Cybernetics Research Group and is Head of the Department of Electronics, Automatic Control, and Computer Science Applied to Industry. His main teaching and research activities have been related to automatic control and robotics. He has been involved in several national and European R&D projects about robots applied to construction.

Ramn Galn was born in vila, Spain, in 1956. He received the B.S. degree in computer sciences and Ph.D. degree from the Universidad Politcnica de Madrid (UPM), Madrid, Spain, in 1978 and 1982, respectively. He is currently a Professor with the UPM, where he is also with the Intelligent Control Research Group. He has published various papers and books. He has a long experience in R&D projects, some of which have been funded by the European Community and others by the Spanish administration; many of these projects are about technological transfer to industry. His main teaching and research activities have been related to intelligent control.

Iaki Navarro (M00) received the M.S. degree in telecommunication engineering and Ph.D. degree in robotics and automation from the Universidad Politcnica de Madrid (UPM), Madrid, Spain, in 2004 and 2010, respectively. He is currently a Research Associate with the Department of Automatic Control, Electronics and Computer Science Applied to Industry, UPM. He has been co-organizer of several student robotic competitions: ChampionBot (Madrid, 2001), CyberTech (Madrid, 20052006, 2008), and CEABot (Almeria, Spain, 2006). His research interests include formation control of mobile robots, swarm robotics, distributed consensus of agents, and mobile robotics.

Diego Rodrguez-Losada (M02) received the M.Sc. degree in mechanics (industrial engineering) and Ph.D. degree in robotics from the Universidad Politcnica de Madrid (UPM), Madrid, Spain, in 1999 and 2004, respectively. He is currently an Associate Professor with the UPM. He has been involved in many national and European R&D projects. His main research interests are simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) and service robots, mainly focusing on interactive mobile robots as tour guides.