Estonia, Forum, Innovations, Technology

Held in the Tallinn Fairs Center, the 18th Robotex will see some of the leading robotics companies present their newest innovations for the first time. During the expo, 26 robotics competitions will take place for competitors of all ages from over 40 countries. One of them will be Starship Animal Rescue hosted by Starship Technologies -- the biggest Robotex competition with a 10,000 euro prize pool. The advanced level competition aims to program an autonomous robot to rescue the animals of the city. 

Other competitions will include an Entrepreneurial Challenge, a Taxify Challenge, Robot basketball hosted by the University of Tartu,  Folkrace by TalTech, and competitions for children and young people which this year are held under the title "Our First Startup."

At the technology expo, companies such as Cleveron, Starship, XPRIZE, Insplay and others will demonstrate their newest products and services. The National Institute for Health Development will display their communication robot Abot, Milrem will present their self-driving tank, TalTech their Iseauto, Cleveron their delivery robot, and the company Formula Student their formula.

In addition, the company KNM will display holograms and the stand of the University of Tartu will offer the opportunity to watch and test ClearBot robots, the fastest camera and the coldest ice cream.

Visitors wishing to try out their hand at robotics will be able to do so in various workshops, conducted by the University of Tartu, TalTech, Digipurk, Merkuur and HITSA, as well as foreign participants such as SNIPS.AI and XPRIZE, among others.

The manager of Robotex, Ave Laas, said that Robotex is a brand which got its start in Estonia and has expanded to 15 countries to date, where preparations are being made for a similar robotics festival. On Tuesday, a 200-strong delegation arrived at Robotex from Cyprus. 

The biggest Robotex events outside Estonia take place in Cyprus, China, India and Colombia. In addition to competitions, educational and start-up programs related to Robtex take place in almost all the countries.

"Our plan is to set up a global network of engineers in the future. It is safe to say that thanks to Robotex, Estonia is emerging as one of the leading robotics nations," Laas said. 

In 2017, Robotex was visited by over 27,000 people. The festival in Tallinn this year is set to bring together more than 30,000 technology enthusiasts from all over the world and the number of competing teams is 1,161. The size of the prize pool of this year's festival is roughly 100,000 euros.  

Robotex International 2018 is organized by the nonprofit MTU Robotex with partners including Starship, Cleveron, Elisa Eesti, Startup Estonia, City of Tallinn, Enterprise Estonia, the U.S. embassy, the Dutch embassy, Proekspert, CDP Technologies, the University of Tartu and TalTech.