The small but beautiful and scenic town of Piombino in Tuscany, Italy will soon be put to the center stage of the entire European community as it prepares for the upcoming robot invasion on Thursday. The small town will be hosting the euRathlon 2015 Grand Challenge. The event will commence on Sept. 17 and will culminate on Sept. 25.

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An approximately two-minute promo video in the euRathlon site provides a brief overview of the events on the robot competition. According to the site, euRathlon is a competition that will test the intelligence and autonomy of the robots through a series of mock emergency scenarios. The scenarios are inspired by the accident that happened in Fukushima in 2011.

IEE Spectrum estimates not less than 40 robots and 150 scientists and robotics engineers to compete in the said event. The event will feature the best robotics engineers and scientists from 21 countries.

Each team will be tested in a simulated disaster-response operations. The euRathlon will feature a one-of-a-kind multi-domain robotics challenge which involve land, air and sea.

The euRathlon 2015 Grand Challenge will be funded by the European Union, under the Seventh Framework Programme consortium. The event aimed to promote cooperation and collaboration in research pertaining to the field of robotics. The event mainly focus on emergency response which provides an avenue for developing methods for the assessment of the performance of each robot entry through a benchmarking process.

The main event will be held near the Piombino thermal power plant. The main event will consist of challenges that will test the teamwork among land, water and air robots. Different tasks will be laid-out for all participants which includes mock tasks within a disaster zone such as data collection, identification of hazardous elements, and search for missing persons.

The euRathlon 2015 Grand Challenge will also feature the two most advance humanoid robots - WALK-MAN and DRC-HUBO - on Earth in an exhibition which would involve search and retrieval operations during disasters. WALK-MAN was developed by the Italian Institute of Techology and the DRC-HUBO was created by the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. DRC-HUBO was the winner in the DARPA Robotics Challenge which was held early this year.

Robot-Era developed by the BioRobotics Institute of the Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa will also be featured in the event. Robotics experts such as Prof. Paolo Dario, Prof. Andrea Caiti, Prof. Alan Winfield and Dr. Anne Bajart will also be featured at the various events during the last few days of the competition

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TagsTuscany, Robotics, euRathlon 2015, Robotics Grand Challenge, Robotics Competition