IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine - September 2016 - 22

Figure 1. Team Naist, the winners of the 2016 SFC.

experts, offering valuable industry
insight in the final critical stages of
their robot development. The teams
who made it to Stockholm, Sweden,
included students, academics, and
industry professionals representing
six countries (Canada, France, India,
Japan, Singapore, and the United
States) and ten nationalities.
Team Bug Eaters from the University
of Nebraska, United States, were the
first to depart after their robot failed to

perform during the demo round. Next
out was Japan's Team Akita. The five
remaining teams were then invited to
compete in the live final, where they put
their robots to the test over three timed
drilling challenges.
With up to 255 holes in each test
panel-with only accurately drilled
holes receiving the judges' marks-all
teams continued to refine and recalibrate their robots throughout each
evaluation round. The process was

designed to reflect the stringent accuracy and quality requirements of real
aircraft assembly lines where errors
in a single step can lead to costly fixes
and even disruptions in production.
Team Vayu from India made it as far
as the end of the second round, and
Canada's R3 made it as far as the early
stages of the final round before bowing out.
The top teams were France's Team
Sirado in third place, Singapore's CriGroup in second, and Team Naist
from the Nara Institute of Science and
Technology, Osaka, Japan, in first
place (Figure 1). The winning teams
shared €26,000 in prizes, and they may
also be invited to develop their ideas
further for commercial application
with Airbus.
This unique challenge was a fantastic experience for all involved, and it
was a step toward Airbus' goal of
encouraging the industry, labs, and
academia to tackle technological challenges that goes beyond any one single
organizations' expertise. The SFC also
proved to be a chance to see teamwork,
innovation, and creativity in action-
and against the clock! Find out more at
http://www.airbusgroup.com/airbuss
hopfloorchallenge.

The 2016 Mobile Microrobotics Challenge
By Igor Paprotny

T

he RAS's MMC 2016, held in
conjunction with ICRA 2016,
aimed to bring together researchers in microrobotics
that launch and drive their microfabricated robots while competing in
accuracy and assembly challenges in
microfabricated arenas measuring
only a few millimeters across. To

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MRA.2016.2587920
Date of publication: 13 September 2016

22

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IEEE ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION MAGAZINE

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compete in the challenge, the robots
(or microrobots) must be fully contained within a 500-μm3 cube. The
teams must be able to fabricate the
microrobots and the arenas in which
the robots compete and also devise a
control setup to allow the robots to be
maneuvered along arbitrary trajectories on the substrate. This can be
extremely challenging compared to
conventional (macroscale) robotics;
for example, most robots are visible

september 2016

only under a microscope. Participation in the MMC forces the teams to
bring their devices out of the laboratory and drive them live in real time,
promoting a reliable and holistic
microrobotic setup. MMC 2016 consisted of three competitions.
1) The Autonomous Mobility and
Accuracy Challenge, in which the
microrobots had to track predefined
microscale trajectories multiple
times. The team with the most
http://www.airbusgroup.com/airbuss
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