We make it to some robot competitions in person here on BotJunkie, most of which are within 5 bucks worth of gas money from our world headquarters on my sofa here in Berkeley California. We also cover a bunch of other competitions around the country, and even internationally, but most of what we hear about comes from Japan or Europe. There are robotics communities all over the world, though, and they meet up at events like the Baltic Robot Sumo Cup, which was held in Klaipeda, Lithuania. Events included Mini-Sumo, 3kg-Sumo, and Roomba-Sumo:
It looks like it was a fairly large and definitely successful event, with the help of some seriously top-tier sponsors like iRobot and ABB, who I kinda wish I’d see on event banners around here more often.
[ Baltic Robot Sumo ]
http://www.botjunkie.com/2009/10/29/baltic-robot-sumo-competition/