Robots gear up for sumo wrestling.

Byline: Lewis Taylor The Register-Guard

Robot sumo wrestling sounds like some far off futuristic fantasy, but it's happening all over the world and right here in Lane County, says Larry Raines, a co-organizer of next weekend's robotics contests at the Oregon Asian Celebration.

"The appeal is to have fun doing something that takes math and science and gives kids a chance to create something," says Raines, who serves as a mentor to the Churchill High School robotics club that will be at the fore of next weekend's competition.

No, these aren't anamatronic dolls with embroidered silk aprons. In fact, they look more like toy cars than overweight athletes. Some of them are even built out of Legos.

Most use infrared sensors to see what's around them. All are trained to attack.

Well, bump is more like it.

The object of the game is to program your tiny robot - the two most popular sizes are roughly 1 pound (mini class) and 6 pounds (Japanese class) - to push another robot out of the ring, and avoid being bumped out yourself.

Now in its second year, the events are expected to draw from several robotics groups in town, and attract competitors from Medford and Portland.

Along with sumo wrestling, there also will be a "line-following" competition in which robots attempt to move across a painted stripe on the floor, and a ShowBot "beauty contest" for robots.

But sumo is still the main event.

Raines says robot sumo isn't a violent contact sport and these robots don't destroy each other like those noisy machines on the Discovery Channel do. In fact, causing damage to another robot is grounds for disqualification.

"There's a whole etiquette behind this," Raines says. "The human opponents actually bow before and after each match."

You can pick up a robot sumo wrestler on the Internet for about $100 if you're willing to put it together. A ready-to-fight sumo robot sells for about $160. Many people start by building robots with Legos and then graduate to "scratch built" robots.

"The computer programming is pretty darn simple," says Raines, who's been involved in the activity for about eight years.

Julia Pommert, the mother of sumo robot builder Marty Johnson, 17, has been a supporter of robotics clubs for years. She helped promote the idea of the Churchill Robotics Club when the group started one a year ago.

"By joining a club, I think it's possible for most anyone who's got a bit of mechanical aptitude (to participate)," she says. "My son is interested in engineering and this is definitely applied engineering."

The Churchill club isn't the only group in town. Pommert estimates there are a half-dozen schools offering robotics clubs. St. Paul's Catholic School hosts a Lego competition that is another big draw.

Still, Raines says, sumo robots have yet to take over Oregon the way they have in some Asian countries such as Japan and Korea, where competitions between non-sentient warriors can draw hundreds of people.

"Thinking about it in the global context, the United States is falling way behind in robotics," he says. "Their robots are just so far ahead of ours."

A desire to make the United States more competitive in the field of robotics is one reason Raines is drawn to robotics competitions. He says programming robots teaches students how to understand object oriented programming, a form of programming that uses objects rather than functions or instructions to create computer applications.

And if that's not enough, he says, it's also a lot of fun.

OREGON ASIAN CELEBRATION

When: Feb. 17-18

Where: Lane County Events Center, 796 W. 13th Ave.

How much: $3 per day, free for kids ages 12 and younger

Information: Call 682-7332 or go to www.asiancelebration.org

Robotics contests: Sumo robot wrestling, line-following contests and ShowBot competitions will be held in Meeting Room 1, in the north hallway of the performance hall at the fairgrounds.