Robotics competitions as benchmarks for AI research

In the last two decades various intelligent robotics competitions have become very popular. Arguably the most well-known of these are the robotic soccer competitions. In addition to their value in attracting media and capturing the minds of the general public, these competitions also provide benchmark problems for various robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. As with any benchmark, care must be taken that the benchmark does not introduce unwarranted biases. This paper critically evaluates the AI contributions made by various robotic competitions on AI research.