Case Study of Underwater Robot Contest for Young Students Under an Outbreak of Infection Diseases

This paper reports on the Junior Class at the "Underwater Robot Convention in JAMSTEC '20", a robot contest held in Japan. This event is an annual robot convention with AUV, Free, Junior, and AI Challenge classes. In 2020, the outbreak of Covid-19 restricted the use of the swimming pool, so we had to organize the Junior Class without the pool. Therefore, the authors changed the focus of the convention to presentations, which were held online. As a result, 6 teams with 32 members participated in the Junior Class. The participating teams were not restricted by travel restrictions and came from far away. Two teams built their own robots without using the kits distributed until last year among the participating teams. 65 people attended the presentations. 40% of the participants and visitors actively joined the convention by submitting comments. In addition, 32% of the comments were from participants and observers outside the junior class, which realized a fruitful discussion from a wide point of view. Because of mutual evaluation policy, these comments facilitated communication between not only the organizers and the participants but also the teams themselves.