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The FIRA HuroCup robotics competition was held in Kaohsiung, Taiwan from August 23-27, 2017. HuroCup is a multi-sport event for humanoid robots, with a broad range of events including an obstacle course, weightlifting, basketball free throws, a marathon, and a sprint, and this year we competed with both small (kid) and adult size humanoids. HuroCup was especially challenging this year, with many strong Taiwanese teams compared to previous years: our overall performance was better than previous years in both leagues, but this was not enough to take home an overall award (though we came in 4th in Adult Size overall). We were very pleased with performances across events though, setting a new record in the teen size long jump, and taking gold in small size archery and silver in large size archery, a new event this year.

This is an enormous event that takes many people to build a team. In addition to Professors John Anderson and Jacky Baltes, and our Post-doctoral Fellow Meng Cheng (MC) Lau, many University of Manitoba Students have been involved with this work:

Andy, Daniel, Kurt and Harry traveled to Taiwan along with MC, who deserves a huge thanks not just for leading the teams on the ground but for being head referee for HuroCup at the same time and delivering an invited talk on work in our lab. Many thanks to all our student volunteers, without whom we would not have a team, and to the Department of Computer Science, the Faculty of Science, and the University of Manitoba who all help with travel costs. A larger gallery of pictures and video should be available shortly.